Downtown St. Albert could soon see a new curving, five-storey business and parking complex if a chamber of commerce proposal goes ahead.
The St. Albert and District Chamber of Commerce is hoping to partner with the city and construct a building that would put office, retail and parking space across the street from city hall.
The proposed building was presented to council on Monday and would sit across the street from St. Albert Place along St. Anne Street, where there is currently a surface parking lot. The cost of the proposal has not yet been revealed.
“Everything just drove us to be downtown,” said Mike Howes, a chamber member who presented its vision to council.
The chamber wanted to build downtown to support the city’s downtown area redevelopment plan (DARP) vision, but kept coming back to the same issue, he told council.
“And that’s where are we going to park?” he asked.
The chamber is proposing to lease the land from the city, ideally for $1 a year and construct a five-storey office and retail building that would incorporate an eight-storey parkade to house about 500 cars.
There would also be a civic square element to the design.
In the proposed DARP plan, a building is envisioned for that lot, as is a civic square. The DARP plan is meant to guide both public and private development of downtown over the next 20 years or so.
Howes said the chamber sent a letter to council at the end of January asking to work together. Partners are needed for the plan, he said, and the intention is to approach few non-profit organizations. The chamber is also open to working with the city if it wanted to lease some office space, Howes said.
“We haven’t ruled out a pedway across from St. Albert Place to this building,” he said.
The chamber is a technically a society, with more than 900 businesses in its membership. It has a small paid staff and a volunteer board made up of local business people. It advocates and lobbies for business interests in the community.
Applications will be made on the municipal, provincial and federal levels to help fund the building, Howes said. The chamber is hoping to apply to the city for a capital partnership grant.
The capital partnership program aims to build more capacity in St. Albert and applicants could receive funding for one-third of a project up to a maximum of $5-million. That funding can be in the form of in-kind contributions as well.
That $5-million cap was confirmed by city manager Patrick Draper when questioned by Coun. Sheena Hughes. Draper said there’s a provision that only one source of municipal funding can be accessed by an applicant.
Hughes also wanted to know if the parking would be paid rather than free. It would be paid, Howes said, but the parking edifice would double the capacity of the current lot on the site.
In an interview Tuesday, Hughes said she has concerns about the paid parking aspect of the proposal, and about the probable application to access funds or in-kind contributions through the capital partnership program.
She’d like to know how the public feels about the loss of the free parking lot that would occur if the building went ahead as suggested.
Mayor Nolan Crouse said he’d asked the chamber to make the proposal public so there could be open conversation.
“Frankly, I liked it,” Crouse said in an interview. “It’s consistent with DARP. I like the vision. How you accomplish it I don’t know, but 30 years ago when people built city hall they didn’t know how they were going to accomplish it either.”
Coun. Gilles Prefontaine said it’s great to see the community buying into the DARP vision, and noted the proposal would hit a few key points of that plan, like offering more parking, office space and retail space in the downtown, as well as including the desired civic square.
But the devil’s in the details, he said, and partnerships will need to occur for this project to go forward.
“It’s a great concept or vision but the funding hasn’t been quite sorted out yet,” Prefontaine said.
