City Discovers Parking Can Be Built

For decades, parking in Notcross was among the community's most extensively documented challenges. It was the subject of six studies, four task forces, two charrettes, and an estimated 340 hours of public comment. Everyone agreed there was not enough of it. Everyone agreed something should be done.

Running alongside that conversation, and occasionally intersecting with it, was another: the Carlisle House. For roughly twenty years, residents, business owners, three separate advisory committees and at least eleven candidates for municipal office had observed that the City should simply acquire the Carlisle House and its surrounding parcel. The observation was made at public meetings, in letters to the editor, and — on two occasions — in adopted resolutions.

In March, the City acquired the Carlisle House.

Last week, 96 free public parking spaces opened on the parcel behind it, bringing the total built since the Epiphany to 212 across three downtown sites.

The breakthrough, staff say, came from a reconsideration of the problem itself. "We had been treating parking as a subject," the City Engineer explained. "At some point in 2025 it was pointed out that parking is, in fact, a surface. Once we understood that, and once we owned a surface, the path forward became considerably clearer."

The Carlisle House itself was retained, stabilised and re-roofed. Its long-term use is currently the subject of a community input process, which staff acknowledge is the last remaining piece of the project operating on the old timetable.

The City further acknowledges that the 2019 Parking Demand Study anticipated a need for approximately 200 additional spaces, and that the study was therefore correct. Its authors have been thanked. Its remaining recommendations are being implemented rather than reviewed.