Dundas St. West Businesses Could Get Parking Spots Back

Business owners along a stretch of Dundas Street West have won a battle they hope will increase traffic in their shops and cafes.

Coun. Ana Bailão’s motion to restore 70 pay and display rush hour parking spots on the busy route in Little Portugal between Dovercourt and Sterling Roads passed at a Toronto-East York Community Council meeting Tuesday night.

“It was a love-in,” Dundas West BIA Board Chair Sylvia Draper Fernandez said of the meeting.

“It’s been a five-year struggle,” she told CityNews.ca.

Former councillor Adam Giambrone angered local businesses when he prohibited parking in the area during peak travel times in an effort to reduce streetcar delays in 2009.

Shop owners and residents claimed the move kept patrons away and said it reduced the neighbourhood to route a for commuters as opposed to a destination spot for shoppers.

“Since the parking ban was put in place, businesses have reported a 30-50 per cent decrease in sales. How can we say that we support community and small business and yet do nothing when they ask for help?” Bailão said in a press release.

The BIA applied for rush hour parking along Dundas West back in 2006 and won. A one-year parking pilot project was implemented. When it ended, Giambrone claimed the rush hour parking was delaying TTC vehicles and promised to work out a compromise solution with local stakeholders.

Draper Fernandez said Giambrone’s initiative to take out rush hour parking and to also designate the no parking areas as no standing anytime areas has been “devastating” to the area.

“How many times are you going to pick up a loaf of bread if it costs you $62 [parking ticket] in the end?” she said.

Mayor Rob Ford toured the neighbourhood just before Christmas and declared “kind of a moratorium in non-rush hour times on signs until this is settled,” Fernandez said.

The amendment still has to go before city council for approval Feb. 7.

“This is something I promised during my campaign would be my first motion, this is something residents asked for,” Bailão said, “and today I am pleased to receive Community Council approval.”

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