A temporary parking lot covers the majority of an iconic park beside the Canadian Museum of Nature.
The Canadian Museum of Nature is going even greener to make up for the construction of a permanent parking lot on its west lawn, says CEO Meg Beckel.
Reducing the size of the lot, improving aesthetics and creating an outdoor exhibit nearby are some of the options being considered to offset the loss of green space, she says.
Museum officials hosted an open meeting Jan. 19 to update the public on the parking lot project. About 50 people attended, and many said they opposed the construction of the lot.
“We’re still very much a car-oriented society, and that’s the big, big issue,” said Bonnie Mabee, who lives near the museum.
Mabee joined several other residents in saying the museum should try to boost mass transit and get people to the museum without their cars.
“The fact that tourist buses do not stop at this museum is appalling,” she said.
Beckel says the museum is promoting a range of transit alternatives. The number of bike racks at the museum has been doubled, a set of Bixi bike rentals will be installed in the spring, and a shuttle-bus between the Parliament Buildings and the museum is being considered, she says.
The museum underwent extensive renovations between 2004 and 2010 and part of the west lawn has been used for temporary parking since construction began. The permanent lot will take up roughly the same space directly to the west of the building, says museum media relations officer Dan Smythe.
Museum officials had previously told the public that it would be returned to green space. However, they were unable to secure $10 million in government grants needed to construct the extra parking underground.
That means underground parking is unaffordable, says Beckel, who pointed out that the museum has a built-in deficit of $2.5 million per year and is facing a five to 10 per cent cut in government funding this year.
The project planners are trying to determine the size of the outdoor parking lot. Museum officials initially wanted to design the lot to handle 80 per cent of peak demand, says Beckel, which would require 150 parking spaces.
However, the museum will test out a temporary, 115 space lot this summer to see if it is a viable alternative, she says.
The additional parking lot is needed because of more visitors and fewer parking lots nearby, says the museum’s director of facilities Marc Chretien.
While annual attendance to the museum has doubled in the last eight years to 500,000, several public parking lots in the area have been converted to condominiums or office buildings, he says.
After deciding on the size and shape, planners must determine what kind of surface the parking lot will have, says Beckel.
Asphalt will be avoided in favour of more natural looking surfaces such as gravel, she says.
Planners also want to use boulders or shrubs to mark the edges of the lot, which Beckel says will be more attractive than concrete.
However, a gravel parking lot is difficult to safely de-ice in the winter, because salt or similar substitutes will filter into and contaminate the ground, says Ata Khan, a professor of transportation engineering at Carleton University.
Beckel acknowledges that the project planners will have to work through this problem.
The planning will extend to more than just the parking lot, which is expected to take up less than half of the current lawn. The museum plans to turn the remaining space into an outdoor exhibit, says Beckel.
“It should celebrate natural grasses, it should celebrate the rocks and minerals in the area, it should celebrate wildflowers. It shouldn’t just be grass,” she says.