Downtown parking survey highlights pressure from employees, patios and bike parking

By Galen Simmons

Finding a convenient parking spot in downtown St. Marys can be difficult enough without spaces intended for customers being occupied by business owners, employees, patios and bicycle parking.

Results from a downtown parking survey presented to the St. Marys BIA at its Oct. 6 meeting suggest those competing uses are contributing to frustration among businesses, residents and visitors, while the town is taking several steps aimed at freeing up more high-demand spaces.

Of the 41 BIA members who responded to the survey, just 51 per cent said they have adequate onsite parking for staff. Ten respondents said their employees use municipal parking lots, while another 10 have staff parking on the street within the downtown three-hour parking area. Only five respondents reported having surplus parking on their own properties, and just two were willing to explore sharing that parking with neighbouring businesses.

Director of culture, tourism and engagement Amy Cubberley said getting employees and business owners out of those high-demand, short-term spaces is one of the clearest opportunities identified through the survey.

“Where we saw the most opportunity was shifting employee and business owner parking from those high-demand three-hour spaces to the all-day parking,” Cubberley said, including municipal lots and all-day street parking outside the core.

Thirty-nine per cent of respondents said they hear parking complaints from residents daily. The most common concern was inadequate nearby parking, followed by business owners and tenants parking where they shouldn’t. Patios and bicycle parking were also identified as concerns.

The town is already working on several changes.

A review of the downtown patio policy that was set be presented to council at its Oct. 13 regular meeting includes proposed fees for businesses using public parking spaces for patios, reducing the percentage of downtown parking that can be occupied by patios from five per cent to 2.5 per cent and limiting how many patios can be located on a single block.

The town has also replaced signage at the bicycle-parking area in front of Snapping Turtle Coffee Roasters and the Flower Shop and More after survey responses suggested some people believed the racks were reserved for those businesses. Cubberley clarified the bicycle parking is available to anyone visiting downtown.

Meanwhile, the town has purchased property at 30 Church St. N to create additional parking primarily for town hall and library employees. While the report identified 12 spaces, Cubberley told the board there are actually 13, which could help move municipal employees out of all-day street spaces and free those spaces for other downtown users. The town is also considering evening and weekend use of the lot by community groups like St. Marys Community Players.

“As a person who does the tickets for the community players, I get a lot of complaints about there being no parking for the theatre,” BIA board treasurer Dan Troyer said. “There’s no place for the actors and stuff, so they park on Church Street. … There are a lot of people who go in there and that’s a lot of vehicles. I don’t have an answer to it, but I just know that I field a lot of questions on that.”

Cubberley responded that the new 30 Church Street North lot could potentially be used by community players actors and volunteers during evenings and weekends when town staff aren’t using it.

Further improvements are planned for the Jones Street lot and Eric Taylor Trail parking area, while the town is developing a more consistent approach to parking enforcement based on data from the town’s first summer of proactive enforcement. A broader downtown parking study is scheduled for 2027.