A momentary departure from 'all that mess'

Recently, 'downtown' Stoney Creek has been weathering a storm. A 'tempest in a teapot' to some. A misnamed, misunderstood deluge to others.

The 'paid parking' kerfuffle.

For months, I never really understood the issue(s), so I didn't register an opinion to anyone. Eventually, my curiosity got the better of me, and I wrote this piece. (Yet never published.) Here it is, even though the last time I checked (last week), a 'compromise' had been reached in the situation: paid street parking in the downtown BIA, none in Municipal Lot #3.

...because ʻHereʼ isnʼt ʻThereʼ

I was brought up in Stoney Creek. It's where I spent almost the entirety of my childhood.

I remember watching soap box derby races down Mountain Avenue South on Flag Day. I remember Saturday morning league bowling at BarDon Lanes. I remember matinées at The Fox, the local 'nabe', as well as evenings at The Skyway Drive-in, both within walking distance from our apartment building. I remember trips to the Stoney Creek Dairy, I remember swimming lessons at Green Acres Pool, I remember helping my brother deliver the Hamilton Spectator and accompanying him to the houses when he 'collected'. I remember playing at The Devil's Punch Bowl, wading through the actual creek the town was named after. I remember Chippyʼs being on the corner of Mountain and King, I remember Ann's Coffee Shop, I remember the fish-and-chip shop burning down on Lake Avenue...and I remember the old IGA.

So it saddens me to witness what's been unfolding there with the ongoing ʻpaid parkingʼ issue, one that threatens some real damage to an especially vulnerable community.

It seems a simple enough issue: Stoney Creek is poised to see the City of Hamilton convert the only municipal lot in the town/city to paid-parking. (As well as curbside meters along the main thoroughfare and some local sidestreets.) Here's some background info.

I'll admit that my gut reaction has been 'And...? Why should Stoney Creek be any different than any other community in Hamilton?' I'm sure many casual observers -especially outsiders- would react the same way.

But after some investigation and extended enquiry, I've come to realize that this is not so simple a discussion. Further, that if we invoke simple blanket solutions, we're as bad as the governments we accuse of not using their common sense in certain situations, where consideration and judicious latitude are called for.

Allow me then to present some of the simple truths of this situation as Iʼve been able to understand them:

-This lot, south of King Street East and west of Mountain Avenue, is the only Municipal Lot in downtown Stoney Creek.

-There are no private lots. (That is, privately-held paid-parking.)

-Currently the lot provides 2-hour free parking, as do local streets.

-Given the physical realities of the downtown, few businesses have their own parking. Shopper's Drug Mart, the TD Bank, RBC, The Village Restaurant all do. The Health Sciences Building (where a sizable number of patients visit daily, not only for doctor appointments but also for lab work and physio, etc) has some. Tim Hortons doesn't, nor does The Royal Canadian Legion.

-Staff that work downtown and drive to work who park either in the lot, or on the local streets and have to move their vehicles every two hours to avoid being ticketed.

-Stoney Creek in general and downtown in particular has a high percentage of elderly residents. More to the point, elderly residents whose mobility requires the use of a car to get around. Even those who live 'close by'. So public transit is not an option for them.

-There are three non-business entities who rely on volunteers: The Legion, Seniors Outreach Services and The Stoney Creek Food Bank. These volunteers depend on the free parking.

-There are a very limited number of parking vouchers handed out by the City to employees and volunteers. Certainly nowhere near a large enough number to satisfy the need.

-The City has estimated the potential yearly revenue from 'downtown' paid parking at some $415,000. Other more objective sources have projected this figure at being closer to $150,000.

-The City currently pockets under $10,000 yearly on parking tickets from this lot and the surrounding streets.

-Elements such as the genesis of the parking lot, the BIA's financial investment in the scenario, as well as the aspect of the longstanding parking tradition of the downtown going back some fifty years are factors, but ones best dealt with elsewhere. (Otherwise, this editorial turns into a multi-part series.)

Here are some possible ramifications should paid parking be implemented:

-Those employees who drive to work will not be able to afford the parking at $1/hour. (Simple math shows this to be $40/wk, $175/mth) The counter-argument that 'Well, they should just take public transit' while an expected one, totally and arbitrarily ignores the reality of 'Public Transit as a Viable Alternative To Driving' truths that exist here. To wit: it's not an across-the-board option. (Iʼm still curious as to the breakdown of current employees regarding the possibility of not using their cars to get to work in the downtown.)

-People who currently park and quickly zip in and out at Tim's will more than likely not be willing to either pay the buck to park out back or risk being ticketed; theyʼll simply go elsewhere.

-All three non-profit entities have gone on record as saying paid parking will effect their demise, because their volunteers cannot absorb the cost of paid parking. (See this article. In the case of The Legion, this would mean the loss of a local landmark for more than four decades, an anchor of the community in so many ways. (Many of which I was unaware.)

-Potential new businesses simply wonʼt consider the downtown as viable. Not so much from the point of view of customers not being willing to pay for parking, but because of the cost for owner-operators and their employees.

-A worst-case scenario sees businesses (such as Tim's) closing, leaving even more vacancies than there currently are, the loss of The Legion; a wholesale shift of a good portion of the downtown landscape at a time when there are already economic cracks in the topography. And all this –seemingly– for the sake of a revenue grab?

A thriving downtown is vital to any city's existence. Stoney Creek's downtown deserves a fair shake, deserves to be respected for what it is and what it means to the community at large, to be provided what it needs to survive, deserves to be promoted to a state that better reflects its heritage and its potential.

With this in mind, what should be done?

Well, from my vantage point, I donʼt believe that paid-parking should be instituted.

Why not, exactly? Let's return to the title of this piece. Because Stoney Creek is not Hamilton. It's not Locke Street, it's not Ottawa Street, it's not Concession Street. It's also not Dundas, it's not Waterdown and it's not Ancaster.

Stoney Creek is an anomaly. It's never had parking sufficient to satisfy the needs of its business owners and their employees, never mind its customers. It's my understanding that some substantive fees have been paid by new business owners in respect to the lack of parking spaces. (Raising the question of 'What did the City do with these funds?') What's currently available spaces-wise isn't ideal, and I certainly sympathize with anyone having to make trips out to their car throughout the day to prevent being ticketed. (In fact, hand-in-hand with not instituting fees, I believe that sufficient passes should be made available to all eligible downtown employees; theyʼre already using the spaces, only right now these cars don't use the same space all throughout the entirety of the day.)

As nobody is capable of creating more parking spaces out of thin air (even a vertical parking garage wouldn't be an answer), it seems pretty clear that at the very least, sane minds see things for how they are, not how they should be, and effect a decision in this instance that doesn't see things in terms what's best for the City revenue levels-wise, but rather, what's best for the community, the actual place where its residents live, what's best for Stoney Creek's 'downtown' everything that notion includes.

I once had a manager whose style was to try to push the same buttons with each staff member in order to get what he wanted. It took me a while to bring him over to the approach of finding out what each employee needed in order to give him what he wanted from them. And this paid parking situation screams something similar: that each area of 'Hamilton' deserves to have its needs addressed individually. Not in the sense of 'preferential treatment', but in the sense of 'whatʼs requiredʼ. Because, when it comes down to it, 'Here' isn't 'There', and any politician worth his or her weight in salt should be able to realize this.

If not, it behooves us all to enlighten them.

The writing of this piece led me to question a few more elements of 'Ye Olde Village of Stoney Creeke', specifically 'What is a Downtown?'. That particular editorial should be published here, presently.

Who says life in a small town isn't interesting...?