On February 10th, Council approved amendments to enhance the policy for allowing underground parking beneath newly dedicated roads. As noted in the report, the current policy has significant shortcomings and fails to achieve the goals of improving parking efficiency and reducing costs for meeting off-street parking requirements. 

The proposed amendments are as follows: 

• Street encroachment eligibility - staff propose amending the policy to allow encroachments only under limited local roads as closures along collectors and local roads could have significant impacts; 
• Partial encroachments - propose to eliminate the option for partial encroachments and only allow for full encroachments (either a tunnel connection or a full parking area that runs under a street from property line to property line); 
• Depth of encroachments - allowing for partial encroachments less than 3m for the first underground parking level could be considered for newly dedicated non-through/limited roadways where it can be demonstrated there would be no need for any future City utilities along that segment of the roadway; 
• Tenure/legal mechanism - a tenure clause proposed to specify that land tenure would be a city-owned fee simple lot, and a prepaid volumetric lease for the below-ground rights for the developer; 
• Compensation approach - a new tiered compensation rate is proposed to be added: 
• 50% of full fee simple current market value for volumetric leases less than 3m beneath surface level for new roads being provided to the City; and 
• 35% of full fee simple current Market Value for volumetric leases 3m or greater beneath surface level. 

More information can be found in the full report by City staff.