Sudbury plans how to deal with parking spots lost to events centre construction

As plans move forward to build a $200 million events centre downtown, Greater Sudbury is looking at how it will make up for the roughly 270 parking spots it will lose during construction. (File)

As plans move forward to a new events centre downtown, Greater Sudbury is looking at how it will make up for the roughly 270 parking spots it will lose during construction.

A plan headed to city council Nov. 18 outlines ways to create 185 spots, and to offer free transit to events at Sudbury Arena to ease the parking crunch.

“The event centre construction area used to contain several businesses that consisted of old buildings and some surface parking that have been acquired and demolished to enable the new event centre project,” the report said.

It includes creating a new lot just south of the Samaritan Centre, on land that was used for a now-demolished rooming house.

“This new lot will contain an additional 18 parking spaces that will be available for monthly parking,” the report said.

Another 59 spots will go where the Multicultural Folk Arts building was located along Paris and Van Horne streets. Another 70 spaces will be created in the CP Rail parking lot on Elgin Street by reorganizing the lot and no longer using the area to dump snow.

Angled parking

Another 10 spots will be added on-street on the west side of Elgin, along with another nine in the YMCA parking lot by removing brush and not dumping snow in the area.

Allowing angled parking and new line painting will add another 19 to the south end of Market Square.

In addition, people who have tickets to events at Sudbury Arena can ride the bus for free two hours before and after the event by presenting their ticket to the bus driver.

The city may also enhance transit to and from the York Street lot, offering shuttle services to and from the lot to downtown.

The shuttles would be offered when, “for example, there is a sold-out concert at the Sudbury Community Arena or evenings when multiple events, such as when the Sudbury Wolves, Sudbury Theatre Centre and Place des Arts may have overlapping events.”

Work creating the new lots would begin this month and be in place by December.

Read the full report here.