Bell Park parking lot may stay asphalt this year

Some members of city council are expressing opposition to a plan that would spend $950,000 to tear up and regreen the parking lot beside the former St. Joseph's Health Centre on Paris Street.

Meeting Wednesday night, councillors first objected to the fact $350,000 in funding for the project was in the base budget, since they were under the impression it was included among a list of options to be voted on at the end of the budget process.

“We keep hearing we have no money, we have no money, we have no money, yet projects such as thing one that could be put off for a year are included in the budget,” said Ward 12 Coun. Joscelyne Landry-Altmann. “Look at our options list – it keeps getting longer and longer, and we have no money.”

Instead of tearing it up now, Landry-Altmann suggested it could be leased to Panoramic Properties, which is redeveloping the hospital into hundreds of luxury condominiums.

Panoramic may be interested in delaying its plans to build an underground parking garage and using the existing lot instead, she said. That way the city could raise money for not only regreening the lot, but for the much larger – but unfunded – plan to redevelop Bell Park, at a cost of $10 million to $20 million.

“It could possibly be an opportunity to generate some funding for this,” she said.

But Paul Baskcomb, the city's acting general manager of Growth and Development, said it's unlikely that Panoramic would be interested, since their parking lot is part of the project's first phase.

The lot has been used by staff at Health Sciences North since the hospital closed in 2010, but last fall, the hospital bought land to build its own lot and so it's no longer in use.

But Ward 3 Coun. Gerry Montpellier said residents in his ward have been asking him why the city would spend money on the regreening project at all.

“It's something constituents have been asking me about,” Montpellier said. “There seems to be a little bit of hostility to the idea of ripping up a parking lot in a city that requires a parking lot.”

In the end, councillors voted to put the $350,000 for the parking lot into the budget parking lot, which is the list of all budget options councillors will vote on when actual decisions are made. If council opts not to proceed with regreening the Bell Park site this year, the $350,000 will likely be reallocated to another capital project.

This year's $512 million city budget is expected to be passed at a meeting Feb. 25 or, more likely, March 5. They are aiming to freeze taxes this year without cutting services or laying off staff. Since they weren't able to get through Wednesday nights agenda after six hours, they voted to add another budget meeting on Feb. 24.