The City of Greater Sudbury is authorized to proceed with a series of parking improvements in downtown Sudbury’s south end.
This work, greenlit by city council members during Tuesday’s meeting at a budgeted cost of $500,000, will include lighting, delineation of parking spaces, signs and line painting.
These efforts will create 185 new parking spaces to replace some of the 270 spaces taken up to accommodate the event centre’s years-long construction process.
With the event centre footprint being fenced off by January and therefore unavailable for parking, the replacement parking spaces are expected to be created in the coming weeks.
During Tuesday’s meeting, city Corporate Services general manager Kevin Fowke clarified that the 270 spaces being taken up for construction don’t include the temporary dirt spaces created as a result of the demolition of area buildings to make way for the event centre.
He also clarified that, despite his report’s title, “Temporary Construction Parking Logistics,” and the word “temporary” appearing throughout, the 185 new parking spaces will be permanent.
Rather than “temporary,” city CAO Shari Lichterman described the project as an “interim parking plan,” with staff slated to table a report early in the new year highlighting additional parking proposals for a post-event centre parking landscape.
“The idea is to bring forward that permanent long-term parking plan as we continue to move through the Downtown Master Plan and complete the event centre,” she said, also clarifying during the meeting that staff fully recognize the public’s interest in knowing exactly what’s going on with parking, which the upcoming report would clarify.
Next year’s report will “include an analysis of the potential need for a parking structure,” according to Fowke’s report to city council members.
An actually temporary portion of the interim parking plan includes free GOVA Transit service for people attending ticketed events at the Sudbury Community Arena and the potential use of shuttle service to and from the York Street parking lot outside of Bell Park.
The York Street option would be used “in extreme circumstances," city Transit Services director Brendan Adair said, and most likely where there are multiple events taking place downtown.
The $500,000 expenditure for parking improvements is coming from the city’s parking reserve fund, “which is a dedicated fund for making improvements and expansion to our parking facilities,” Lichterman explained, noting that the city is using the fund for its expressed purpose.
Ward 9 Coun. Deb McIntosh added an amendment to the motion, to have a sign installed on Minto Street directing motorists to the 295-space parking garage which operates under Tom Davies Square. Not a lot of people know this parking garage is open to the public, she said, describing it as underutilized.
The downtown parking boost includes the following:
- A new lot south of the Samaritan Centre on Elgin Street. This area used to contain rooming houses numbered as 356-360 Elgin St. and will contain 18 parking spaces.
- Extend the lot at the corner of Paris and Van Horne Streets where the Sudbury Multicultural Folk Arts Association building and parking used to be, to add 59 spaces.
- Add concrete barriers to better delineate parking spaces in the main area of the CP/Elgin Street lot west of the Bridge of Nations to result in an additional 70 spaces.
- Enhance markings at the curb (and for some areas along the retaining wall) on the west side of Elgin Street to better delineate on-street parking along Elgin, resulting in 10 additional on-street parking spaces.
- Remove brush and make snow loading arrangements for the Elgin Street / YMCA lot to create an additional nine parking spaces.
- Enhance line painting and allow angle parking at the south end of the Market Square lot to create 19 spaces.
Leduc receives curt responses from colleagues
City council’s approval wasn’t unanimous, with the lone holdout that of Ward 11 Coun. Bill Leduc, who attended the meeting at the Lionel E. Lalonde Centre in Azilda virtually.
After Leduc commented that Adair hadn’t answered his question regarding what number might trigger the city to use shuttle service from the York Street parking lot, inquiring as to whether Downtown Sudbury would help pay for parking improvements (they aren’t) and criticizing the city for “subsidizing a professional hockey team,” in reference to Sudbury Community Arena tenants the Sudbury Wolves, Ward 10 Coun. Fern Cormier laid into Leduc.
When it comes to “subsidizing” the Wolves, Cormier said, it “is absolutely, categorically, not what this report says, it is not what this council is deciding tonight, and it is absolute and complete and utter misinformation and rubbish.”
Cormier also asked Leduc to apologize for what he described as an inappropriate tone he took with city staff.
“Thank you, Coun. Cormier…” Leduc said in a sarcastic tone, prompting Ward 8 Coun. Al Sizer, who chaired the meeting, to interrupt Leduc to request no further explanation be provided.
Leduc added, “The tone of voice of councillor Cormier is unacceptable also.”
“Coun. Leduc and I can debate and we can disagree,” Cormier responded. “It is not fair to put staff in that position. They do not have the same breadth or latitude that I have to do what I’m doing right now.”
Leduc received curt responses from colleagues twice more during Tuesday’s parking discussion.
After Sizer pre-empted Leduc’s comments by requesting “a respectful tone,” Leduc responded by beginning to describe his difficult day before Ward 1 Coun. Mark Signoretti interrupted him.
“We don’t need to hear how your day went and how many hours you’ve been up for,” Signoretti said. “If you have a question, we’re at council chambers, you’re not at council chambers. You’ve attended virtually for all the meetings in Azilda, so respect our time and our evening.”
Leduc responded by arguing the city doesn’t have enough knowledge to proceed with an event centre, and, “We even have the Kingsway Employment (District) industrial lands moving forward that could even jeopardize future investment in the downtown.”
“This decision has been made,” Sizer said. “This reminds me of a few years back where every council meeting, the sky was falling about the event centre. … There are no ifs ands or buts, unless the moon falls out of the sky, that we won’t be building an event centre in downtown Sudbury.”
Sizer was referencing the since-cancelled Kingsway Entertainment District, a precursor to the downtown event centre a divided city council debated repeatedly until it was cancelled in 2022.
When Leduc pressed further with the notion that city council members “don’t have a lot of the information that we need to really move this forward,” Sizer countered, “We certainly have enough information for this council for the decision they made to move the project forward, Coun. Leduc, I’m going to end this conversation now.”
Leduc has established himself as the solitary member of city council opposed to the event centre, and has pledged to make it a campaign issue in advance of the Oct. 26, 2026 civic election. This, despite the building's construction expected to be well underway by that time, with various contracts in place, the foundation laid and the building’s frame being erected.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.