No parking on Uplands after Lulu traffic 'nightmare'

Posted Feb 2, 2012 By Laura Mueller

After the local city councillor raised concerns about traffic and parking after a warehouse sale at the new CE Centre, "no-parking" signs have been installed along Uplands Drive.

The Lululemon sale at the new trade-show centre on Jan. 20 led to a backlog of vehicles on Uplands Drive and Hunt Club Road leading to the CE Centre at 4899 Uplands Dr.

The congestion was enough to elicit angry calls to the office of Gloucester-Southgate Coun. Diane Deans. That sparked Deans to file a lengthy inquiry at the city council meeting on Jan. 25, asking what could be done to alleviate future traffic issues in the area.

Deans also asked if the city would consider putting "no-parking" signs along Uplands, where people parked during the sale and overstayed the three-hour on-street parking limit during the sale. By the time the day was through, those signs had already been installed from Breadner Boulevard to the Airport Parkway.

Deans called the issue a "double-edged sword."

"Clearly it's an important centre for economic development in the city and clearly it's an early success, and that's good news," Deans said. "On the other hand, we don't want it to be a traffic circulation nightmare for local residents and people trying to access the airport."

When the planning committee looked at the proposal in 2010, Deans said she expressed concern about the traffic circulation. She wanted to see a peer review of the city's traffic study, but staff said it was necessary.

"But now I'm thinking maybe it was," Deans added.

But a memo to city councillors from CE Centre president, Kevin McCrann, states that the company feels its upgrades to traffic circulation have had a positive effect.

"The fact of the matter is there was at no time, any traffic backed up onto the parkway. We were confident in our planning and were thrilled to see the flow coming from the parkway as planned," he stated in the letter.

There still remains some additional traffic-circulation work to be done at the parkway in the spring, McCrann noted.

McCrann said that he was happy to see the installation of "no-parking" signs on Uplands because he felt that people using the road to park along was "dangerous." McCrann said the centre's staff did call bylaw services to help enforce the parking limits, but because parking wasn't restricted on Uplands at the time, "there was limited action they were able take," McCrann said.

But McCrann also wrote in his letter that the CE Centre's parking lot, which can hold more than 2,000 vehicles, was never more than 65 per cent full. The centre's website lists the parking fee as $7.