New neighbourhood daycares in Edmonton could soon have less on-site parking.
City council voted in a public hearing on Tuesday to reduce the required amount of pick-up and drop-off spaces for daycares. City staff said it removes regulatory barriers for those setting up small-scale daycares.
The decision comes after the city’s blanket rezoning in 2024 opened up where child-care facilities can go, allowing them on corner lots in most areas.
Mayor Andrew Knack said to reporters it’s all about making dropping kids off less car-reliant in the first place.
“If you’ve got a child-care or daycare space in your community, then you actually have the option of walking or biking to that space,” he said. “But for most of our city’s history, we didn’t allow for that.”
(City of Edmonton)
Under the old rules, daycares had to have two parking spaces for the first 10 children who attend the facility, and then one space for each additional 10 children.
Now, providers only need one space for every 10 children across the board. And in areas with unrestricted street parking, that parking requirement is reduced by half.
That means a daycare with 40 kids that once needed to build five parking spaces, now only needs two — provided there’s unrestricted parking on the street outside.
Traffic trouble
Cavanagh resident Nataliya Didusenko lives next door to a site that has been rezoned for a daycare and is appealing the permit, in part because of traffic concerns.
“I think that the city has to find the balance between placing so many daycares in residential areas and to protect the quality of life of existing residents,” Didusenko said.
“We just purchased this home and expected to be in a residential area, and now it’s not going to be the same. It’s going to change everything.”
(Travis McEwan/CBC)
Coun. Michael Janz said he’s been pushing to ease parking requirements for daycares for a while. He said in his experience taking his own kids to daycare, lots of people bike or walk when the option is available to them.
“Honestly, it’s so convenient being able to have a daycare close to home,” he said.
“I think we need more daycares and more child-care options in more communities.”
The city did a traffic study on child-care facilities in fall 2024 and found 17 per cent of trips to and from daycares are done by walking or cycling. It also found that demand for parking was about 20 per cent lower than the requirements under the old rules.
The rules do not apply to home-based child care with less than seven children.
The changes passed and took effect immediately. Thu Parmar and Karen Principe were the only city councillors who voted against them.
Midblock, maybe
Neighbourhood daycares are typically restricted to corner lots because they provide more drop-off opportunities than a mid-block lot.
Marcelo Figueira, with planning consulting firm Green Space Alliance, spoke in favour of the changes on Tuesday.
“The parking is a good step forward,” he said in an interview.
Figueira said neighbourhood daycares are increasingly desirable for providers because they are less risky than leasing commercial space.
But he said there are still a number of criteria that are difficult to meet, including finding a suitable corner lot.
“If the operators can only go to commercial plazas or they have to find corner lots, that’s a very tough situation,” Figueira said. “There’s only so many corner lots in the city that can meet the criteria.”
Janz told other councillors he’d like to take a look at easing rules further to allow for mid-block daycares in the future.