Barrie’s Outlook on Parking

That high-rise development  at 129 Collier St., located between Dunlop Street East and Collier Street, between Poyntz Street and Sampson/Berczy streets brought the parking squeeze issue to the forefront.  

Here are 5 Points You Should Know about this development & Council’s stance on parking:  

• This development is a rental residential tower made up of 12 and 16 storeys on a shared podium with an underground parking structure 
• This land is considered a brownfield site. Phase I and II Environmental Site Assessments have been completed and a Record of Site Condition (RSC) has been issued and registered with the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks.
• Rezoning this project was approved meaning that all floor levels of the buildings fronting Collier Street and Dunlop Street West will be required to be comprised of residential and/or commercial uses to activate the street frontages. It’s to ensure there are not four storeys of parking garage and then the building on top of it. With Bill 23, the city can’t regulate building design through site plan. The rezoning will change the land use from transition centre commercial to transition centre commercial with special provisions. They will permit an increase to building height and reductions of side-yard setbacks, landscape buffers, parking standards for required spaces and dimensions, and the percentage of required commercial coverage. 

• The parking ratio for this development is 0.85 spaces per dwelling unit, causing local businesses to speak up at city council on Wednesday. A local chiropractor spoke up for four businesses requesting the ratio be upped to 1 unit = 1 parking spot so that street parking for their customers wouldn’t be used by the developments’ tenants.     

• The city’s director of development services said overall there is going to be a lower parking ratio in Barrie.  “The expression is un-bundling your parking, so you might be able to purchase a unit in the building, but you wouldn’t purchase parking. Or you might purchase two (parking spaces).” 

 Parking is most commonly your first and last interaction when visiting a property. “My understanding is the new, proposed Official Plan (which still requires provincial approval) and eventual zoning bylaws are proposing a lower parking rate,” said Mayor Alex Nuttall. “It’s going to be something that we see more and more (lower parking ratios).”  

Like it or not, at least now you’re in the know about Barrie’s parking future.