With downtown parking dwindling in supply, one business owner has taken it upon himself to come up with a solution, and even designed a parking lot for the city to consider.
Joe Winacott, owner of Studabakers Beachside restaurant on Orillia's waterfront, thinks the city should purchase a vacant Front Street property — currently listed for sale — to increase the downtown parking inventory and ease the stress on local and visiting shoppers.
After the city closed two municipal lots last summer to make way for the extensive work planned along Centennial Drive, Winacott hired an aerial photographer and 3D rendering company to help him come up with a parking concept for the property.
“We were trying to think outside the box. You know, how can we fix this (problem)? How can we try to make it feasible for us to get more parking?” Winacott told OrilliaMatters. “Right now, we're renting spots off other businesses downtown and looking for other locations to rent spots for our staff.”
The lot, adjacent to the restaurant and the Legion, could be home to more than 100 parking spaces, Winacott said, and the design includes space for boat trailer parking, food trucks, and dozens of conventional parking spaces, as well as a boardwalk that would connect the property to the waterfront.
“It's more of a parking centre; it kind of hits on a lot of things that the people were not happy with when they learned about parking being taken away, or things being taken away like the ice cream trucks and the food trucks,” Winacott said. “It’s parking for the whole town to kind of connect … the waterfront to the downtown.”
Winacott brought the idea to the city last summer, when he was running for council, but city staff recommended he bring the idea back once the election was over.
In November, he discussed the concept with some city officials, and left them with a package to share with council, but he has yet to see the idea make it on to a council agenda.
“For something like this, it would have been a good idea to kind of reach out to people that are downtown all the time, or find out the needs from the people,” Winacott said.
He said city staff mentioned ideas they are working on, such as a planned pilot shuttle service to bring people to the waterfront.
“It was nice talking to them, and they were telling me their ideas about getting the channel going,” he said. “They are trying, which is great. I just think that when people come in with ideas, they're not as open as possible.”
Back in 2020, council approved, in concept, a transit terminal and multilevel parking structure for Peter Street, but Mayor Don McIsaac recently spoke against pursuing that project at this time, citing an estimated $30-million price tag.
For Winacott, his idea is a way to offer alternatives to the parking problem downtown, which will intensify as development rolls out in the waterfront area,he predicted.
“Once all those developments (are) done, there's going to be less parking; it's going to be busier down there. People are going to want to come and check it out,” he said. “I'm sure it's going to … look great, but where are we going to park?”
McIsaac agrees that parking downtown is an issue, and said the city needs to look at multiple options moving forward.
"I applaud the initiative. Any way we can look at to solve the parking problem has got to be looked at because it's a huge problem," McIsaac told OrilliaMatters. "It's one of the main concerns of people when they go downtown."
McIsaac said the property's cost, as well as environmental issues on the lot, however, will need to be looked at by the city.
"We need to look at that as part of our parking equation, in addition to what we're looking at (on) Peter Street, and what we're doing with parking in general just to see what we can do to get more parking," he said. "I wouldn't say it's under active consideration, but it's certainly an option."
