By Paul Orazietti, BIA Executive Director
The City of Surrey at an Open House for a new Cloverdale Town Centre Plan (June 2018), proposed the redevelopment of two primary City parking lots on 176A St. (located on 176A St at 57A Ave and at 58A Ave) for a higher and better use. The idea was to consider replacing these parking lots with new locations elsewhere but the amount of space proposed was less than existing (from 68,800 to 50,000 sq ft). The City considered having more development in the historic downtown based on some research that had been conducted in 2016. Thankfully, the City recognized that additional research was necessary due to all of the construction that has taken place recently and will be conducting that research in approx. the middle of September.
During the months of July and August 2018, the Cloverdale BIA has collected over 1200 signatures on a petition asking the City to support the continued use of those two parking lots on 176A St. After years of slow growth, the Cloverdale Town Centre (aka Downtown Cloverdale) has seen a record number of new developments both commercial and residential. The full build out of the area will still take 3-4 years but parking is now becoming more precious than ever before and the current parking lots and on street parking is more often completely full during the day.
On a more positive note the BIA is in discussions with the new City of Surrey Community Enhancement Planner to upgrade the largest city parking lot at 57A Ave and 176A St. with a new electric vehicle charging station, new parking lane stripes, decorative split rail cedar fencing, garbage enclosures and more lighting. The BIA is also looking at using a drone to take pictures of parking in the downtown to help create a new Parking Strategy that can monitor usage and to help plan for peak period parking during special events.
In a recent Transit/Transportation survey of the Cloverdale Town Centre business community that the BIA undertook this summer, 77.5% of respondents felt that Transit was poor to very poor. 73.18% felt that there is insufficient parking for their customers. The BIA is working with the Cloverdale Chamber to lobby for improved transit service but nothing is appearing in the short term. A number of unhappy people who work locally and take the bus from North Surrey to get to Cloverdale can do so twice an hour during the rush hour period.
