City restarts plan to enhance parking/pedestrian safety around Hotel Dieu

Posted Feb 2, 2012 By Bill Hutchins

EMC News - After two years stuck in neutral, Kingston is restarting discussions to expand patient parking around Hotel Dieu Hospital.

"We know there are challenges with respect to parking in that area," said mayor Mark Gerretsen.

The city and the hospital will begin new talks to look for ways to increase the parking supply and to enhance pedestrian safety around the busy hospital.

Hotel Dieu is in the midst of a multi-million dollar expansion to take almost all out-patient clinical care duties from Kingston General Hospital. The clinical expansion will be completed this fall and will result in an extra 50,000 new patient visits annually at the Brock Street hospital.

The issue is, where are all those additional patients supposed to park?

City officials say it's time to find some concrete answers. Council has agreed to spend up to $50,000 on parking-related studies, though the actual solutions could cost millions.

"It's intended to be a joint cost with the hospital to offer advice to council on how to proceed," said chief administrator Gerard Hunt of the $50,000 expense.

He says results of the city-hospital parking talks should be known in four to six months.

Initial plans to expand the multi-level 440-space Chown parking garage collapsed in 2009. In 2007, the hospital unveiled an ambitious plan to purchase the city-owned garage and then partner with the private sector to expand and manage the facility, adding another 200 spaces on land it owns at Brock and Montreal Streets. There were also plans to construct a pedestrian skywalk over Brock Street.

The hospital had negotiated a purchase of the city's biggest parking garage for about $4 million, plus a $61,000-a-year land lease for 99 years, but later backed away from the complex talks citing financial risks of partnering with a private consortium.

"It all came down to managing the risk. We were talking about a capital investment in the $20 million magnitude," said Ted Darby, vice president of planning for Kingston three hospitals, in a 2010 interview.

More than two years later, the city is now launching a new effort to help patients find parking.

"The majority of users of Hotel Dieu Hospital are Kingstonians so I think we have a bit of an obligation to sort out the parking situation there," explained Gerretsen.

However, the mayor stopped short of endorsing an expanded Chown garage as the Dieu had originally proposed. In response to the question, he told reporters: "Perhaps the first question that you need to ask before 'Why don't we do what they were going to do?' is 'Why were they not successful doing what they wanted to do?'"

Gerretsen says the city may explore solutions other than a costly parking structure, but he did not elaborate.

The construction of a $10-$25 million downtown parking garage was identified as a long-term goal of Kingston's strategic plan, but it is not an immediate priority of city council.

The mayor added: "Not everything can be at the top of the list but that doesn't mean we're not dedicated to finding some solutions."