A proposal to transform a vacant gas station into a restaurant and parking lot is on track after a city committee voted to exempt the site from the city’s guidelines on the use of the land.
The city’s planning and environment committee unanimously approved a zoning amendment last week which will allow a restaurant and commercial parking lot at 154 O’Connor St.
The property, at the corner of O’Connor and Gloucester streets, had been a Shell service station since the 1930s, according to a report by Shell Canada. The gas pumps were removed a year ago and now the boarded-up garage sits empty on a fenced gravel lot.
The proposal, which was submitted to the city in August, would see the existing building renovated into a restaurant and coffee shop, with an adjoining patio. The surrounding lot would be paved for paid parking of about 50 vehicles, according to the proposal.
Somerset Ward Coun. Diane Holmes initially expressed concern about the proposed commercial parking lot.
“Once entrenched as a commercial parking lot, providing mostly long-term commuter parking as these lots generally do, their potential for redevelopment as per the Official Plan goals is much less likely,” Holmes said in a report to the committee by deputy city manager Nancy Schepers.
The city’s Official Plan, which lays out guidelines for the use of land, says new public parking should not be allowed on the site under the Centretown Secondary Plan, which aims to “conserve and enhance the residential character of Centretown as an inner city community,” Schepers notes in the report.
But Schepers concludes permission for the parking lot should be allowed as it is only for temporary use, and is in conjunction with the restaurant development. The exemption for the parking lot will expire Nov. 23, 2013.
Holmes decided to support the proposal after the exemption was limited to three years, according to spokesperson Linda McQuarrie. Holmes says the plan is as “a good step” towards developing long-term residential structures on the site, such as luxury condominiums, which is more in line with the Official Plan.
“That corner will be more interesting,” Holmes says, describing the current lot as an under usage of the land. “(It’s) an improvement on the gas station.”
Holmes says the parking lot would probably attract no more vehicle traffic than the gas station did, and the restaurant will likely draw more pedestrians and cyclists to the location.