Arena planning seems inadequate
The City of Saskatoon just released its poorly conceived Journey to the District parking comparison.
SaskTel Centre starts with an empty parking lot on event night. Marshals might even help you get in and efficiently parked there on this wide-open, unobstructed, paved site.
The downtown requires 2.5 times more area to get this amount of parking, but this is never completely empty to start as there are always people doing other things on any given night. Instead, you will have to hunt and peck as you endlessly drive around a maze of smaller streets to find a suitable parking spot.
There is no “as the crow flies” here as blocks of buildings and fences will be in your way. After the evert, you will need to walk around the maze of dark streets to find your parking space in the late evening.
Now picture this entire mess with back-to-back events like the Garth Brooks concerts in 2016. And the first set of patrons decide to linger in the downtown for a meal and they do not free up the parking space they use. Mayor Clark’s “bus rapid transit” plan is incapable of moving that many people in a reasonable amount of time!
What is going on? So many years later, with dozens of high-priced consultants involved and millions of dollars of property already bought, there is insufficient planning overall. Seems to be a constant theme for our city administration.
Published in the September 8, 2022 issue of The StarPhoenix