CBBarnett said:
In summary - could we build a replacement parkade? Sure we could. It's just a really, really inefficient and expensive way to produce the same amount of parking than if we just got rid of 48% of it right now and not build anything else.
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Strictly from a money perspective it doesn't make sense, but there other advantages. Going on SP's rough diagram, the buildings built in place of the surface parking could generate as much as 2,000 residential units. The property taxes from those units should easily offset the cost of maintaining the newly built parkade, and even the upfront capital costs. It also means another 2,000-3000 people have walking access to a train station.
Personally, I would okay with the city doing away with all parking and developing all of the space, but I also think having a small amount of parking gives some flexibility to the system. It's important to remember that the transit system as a whole is subsidized, and if it only existed on whether it made financial sense, there wouldn't be a transit system. I'd rather see a parkade built then leave empty surface parking land undeveloped.

IMO, the 510 stall parkade is a reasonable compromise. It adds an option for some people who need to use the station, but find the bus feeder system isn't a feasible option - and from my own personal experience this can absolutely be the case. Whether we charge or not, is another debate. I would prefer to charge, even it's a couple of bucks.
 
darwink said:
New development doesn’t increase revenue to the city. Every development that doesn’t reduce required services requires the city to raise taxes.
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Yes and no. 2,000 new units anywhere is extra revenue, but of course there is newly added costs to the city for those units. The 2,000 units here should add less costs to the city than 2,000 greenfield units. My question is, would revenue those 2,000 units generate be greater than the extra costs they would add? If so it would be possible for the development to pay for help offset costs for a new parkade no?
 
Alex_YYC said:
2,000 new units anywhere is extra revenue
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This is 100% not the case. Only extra cost. Unless city council raises taxes, tax revenue is flat. Our tax system is revenue neutral market assessment. It means year over year a revenue requirement (tax revenue) is set then the property assessment is set, and the two are used to set the rate.

If council doesn’t change the revenue requirement and there is growth that means all other things being equal the rate drops.

Our system was designed my conservatives to ensure every bit of extra revenue is a tax increase, not automatic.
 
MichaelS said:
Unless it is in a CRL, it is not new revenue. It just means other properties pay less.
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And a CRL just screws with the math a bit. And even then it is a net negative to the rest of the city budget, because the CRL revenue isn’t going to paying for services for those units. If the province goes in on the CRL too it has the effect of transferring provincial taxes from elsewhere to the city, which might be positive, depending what the CRL is spending on.
 
darwink said:
And a CRL just screws with the math a bit. And even then it is a net negative to the rest of the city budget, because the CRL revenue isn’t going to paying for services for those units. If the province goes in on the CRL too it has the effect of transferring provincial taxes from elsewhere to the city, which might be positive, depending what the CRL is spending on.
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How do you know so much about this stuff @darwink. Are you an industry or political insider? Or work in the field?
 
This discussion is emblematic of the whole issue about parking. All this complexity - tax incremental financing, levies, complex politically-fraught setups - all attempts to give a few hundred potential drivers, a tiny fraction of potential transit users, some parking in a new transit oriented development.

Many of these “solutions” would only increase the cost of development around Brentwood, preventing the very thing we are doing this for - transit oriented development.

And all this effort is to continue a unproven myth - that park-and-ride is a needed feature for Brentwood station over all the other options for the land, otherwise people won’t use transit.

Apart from terminus stations, the little data we have for Calgary’s Park-and-ride demonstrates no measurable relationship between number of parking stalls and ridership. When we charged for parking in 2009 to offset the costs to maintain parking, Brentwood’s parking demand collapsed while feeder bus ridership in the network increased.

Context is important - Brentwood isn’t the edge of the city, it’s 12 minutes by train to downtown and walking distance to the largest cluster of jobs and activity outside of the core. It’s a top place to put some of the expected growth Calgary will see as we approach 2 million people in a few decades.

It’s a choice - we can continue the parking myth via an expensive compromise parkade, or skip the complexity and just get rid of some (or all) of the parking and redevelop it.
 
CBBarnett said:
Apart from terminus stations, the little data we have for Calgary’s Park-and-ride demonstrates no measurable relationship between number of parking stalls and ridership. When we charged for parking in 2009 to offset the costs to maintain parking, Brentwood’s parking demand collapsed while feeder bus ridership in the network increased.
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When we charged for parking demand dropped, but people still used it. Keep the parking at the usage levels of 2009 and go back to charging. It should work out to 400-500 stalls. Combine that with a small levy from the new developments and avoid having taxpayers foot the bill.
 
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darwink said:
This is 100% not the case. Only extra cost. Unless city council raises taxes, tax revenue is flat. Our tax system is revenue neutral market assessment. It means year over year a revenue requirement (tax revenue) is set then the property assessment is set, and the two are used to set the rate.

If council doesn’t change the revenue requirement and there is growth that means all other things being equal the rate drops.

Our system was designed my conservatives to ensure every bit of extra revenue is a tax increase, not automatic.
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You’re mincing words here. Those potential 2000 units would 100% add revenue as they still have to pay into the tax system and there will be revenue from those buildings.
Of course this is the same everywhere in the city but these 2000 units should in theory be much more efficient revenue generators than greenfield developments.

The revenue from those units wouldn’t directly pay for something like an adjacent parkade, but could indirectly pay for it. My preference would be not to have taxpayers pay for it, but rather a small development levy toward a parkade combined with charging for parkade usage.
 
darwink said:
This is 100% not the case. Only extra cost. Unless city council raises taxes, tax revenue is flat. Our tax system is revenue neutral market assessment. It means year over year a revenue requirement (tax revenue) is set then the property assessment is set, and the two are used to set the rate.

If council doesn’t change the revenue requirement and there is growth that means all other things being equal the rate drops.

Our system was designed my conservatives to ensure every bit of extra revenue is a tax increase, not automatic.
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I agree with Habanero. Saying that the new units don’t add revenue is just semantics. There will be revenue from these new units and that added revenue from the new units should exceed the added costs and give some kind of net gain.
While technically it’s not added revenue overall it’s still a net gain through the increased efficiency.
 
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No, Darwink is correct. While the units would pay revenue, it would automatically equate to a decrease in revenue from other properties. This is how our system is set up. For ease of math, say that Council decides through a budget that they need to collect $100 a year in taxes, on a town that has 100 properties. All 100 properties are equivalent value, so all are paying $1 a year in taxes. If one of those 100 develops, and suddenly doubles the taxes it pays, because it increased its assessed value, that doesn't mean Council collects $101 (the initial $100, plus the additional $1 from the developments increases assessment). It means that Council still only collects $100, it is just that the developed property pays $2, and the rest pay $0.989.

It is understandable that this is confusing. The City itself seems to perpetuate this myth when trying to convince communities about redevelopment. Developers sure do. But, the reality is, development doesn't mean new revenue for the Council. That said, it is good, as it SHOULD mean less taxes for your existing property, everything else being equal. And some forms of development will allow for a bigger tax reduction, if they can be serviced more efficiently.
 
My choice of wording wasn’t the best. What I meant to convey was that there would be a net benefit for the city if there were 2,000 new units there rather parking. It could potentially allow the city to increase the budget without increasing taxes.
This is assuming the costs associated with the added units isn’t higher than the tax revenue, which should be the case.
I look at it as extra revenue in a round about way.
 
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I also agree that Darwink is correct, and do understand how the tax system works, though it can be somewhat confusing. Also my point wasn’t properly explained which adds to the confusion.

I guess my point is that the city could use the extra revenue from these new units to increase the budget (and use the increase to fund something extra that otherwise might not be funded) while at the same time keep everyone’s taxes the same. Or they could keep the budget the same but lower everyone’s taxes. Either way these new units should in theory indirectly provide extra money to someone or something.
 
Alex_YYC said:
My choice of wording wasn’t the best. What I meant to convey was that there would be a net benefit for the city if there were 2,000 new units there rather parking. It could potentially allow the city to increase the budget without increasing taxes.
This is assuming the costs associated with the added units isn’t higher than the tax revenue, which should be the case.
I look at it as extra revenue in a round about way.
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My best estimation is 2000 units would add approximately $3.5M to $4M per year in taxes. I don’t know how much of a cost increase these units would add, but I bet it’s less than $3.5M per year.
Regardless of how the tax revenue is labeled or how it’s handled, it’s a net benefit. Let’s just call it a monetary benefit.

Regarding the parking, I say blow it all out and develop the space.
 
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