Raise the Hammer

It seems that Blanchard is attempting to rely on this by-law, which deals with where required parking for a building may be located:

http://www.hamilton.ca/NR/rdonlyres/D486...

Where this By-law requires the provision of parking facilities, no lands shall be used and no building shall be used or erected in any zone unless there are provided and maintained facilities for parking in accordance with the following regulations and Parking Schedules, unless otherwise specifically provided for in this By-law.

5.1 LOCATION

i) Required parking facilities shall be located on the same lot as the use requiring the parking.

ii) Notwithstanding Subsection i) above, where the provision of parking on the same lot as the use requiring such parking is not possible, or not practical, such parking facilities may be located on another lot within 300.0 metres of the lot containing the use requiring the parking. Such alternate parking shall only be situated in a Commercial, Industrial or Downtown Zone or within the same zone as the use requiring such parking, and shall be subject to Subsection iii) herein.

In other words, this allows required parking for a building to be provided within 300m of the building if it is not practical to provide it on the same lot. It seems pretty clear that this does not apply here because Blanchard's other buildings must already be satisfying their parking requirements! In any case, Blanchard is operating it as a public parking lot, not restricted to his own tenants.

But this is beside the point as section vi) is absolutely crystal clear that this surface lot is illegal:

vi) Within any Downtown Zone, no new surface parking lots shall be permitted except where the parking is accessory to the main use on the same lot.

Blanchard does not have any other 'main use' on this lot, he has satisfied his by-law parking requirements for his other buildings (which have been in operation for years) and are next to other surface parking lots. This lot is illegal, end of story.

The most frightening thing about this is that it gives us a very good idea of what he has in store for the site of his 19th buildings on Gore Park: he will demolish them and use the site as surface parking until he can sell it on or find financing for his dream development.

Comment edited by kevlahan on 2013-12-07 13:48:46