Purpose of Project and Expected Outcomes
The purpose of the project is to ultimately facilitate the RFB in carrying out their mission statement by providing a sustainable solution to the parking issue so that the different stakeholders such as the volunteers and the client can have better accessibility and convenience.
Stakeholders
Clients
The RFB serves food to over 1500 clients a week so they are the party that suffers the most from the parking problem, through limited access and the risk of parking fines. There are many reasons for which a client needs to drive : some clients have physical disabilities, some have children with them, some live in areas with no public transportation and some are receiving a weeks worth of groceries and need a car to transport it all.
Volunteer
The Food Bank has over 180 regular volunteers who come every week. The volunteers are performing a civic service and may be choosing the organisation they volunteer with based on location, or ease of access. Around 90 percent of the volunteers are seniors so driving is definitely a preferred method of transportation as it is a lot more convenient.
Staff
There are a total of 6 staff members at the Richmond Food Bank. The staff members are in charge of the operation of the Food Bank. The staff members are also affected by the parking and the move since they are daily users of both, and they try to commute to the food bank by methods other than driving to free up parking for clients.
City of Richmond
The City of Richmond is a powerful stakeholder. They are in charge of the street parking regulations and by-laws, including the zones and times of paid street parking. They are also the ones who issue parking tickets in the RFB’s community. Since some of the project solutions could potentially involve the City of Richmond, parking revenues and some deliberation may be at stake for the city.
Community the Food Bank is located in
The Food Bank affects more than the people that uses it, it also indirectly impacts the community in which the Food Bank is in. The current location is near other social services, and organisations that are geared towards serving the community, and by moving to a new location it may affect the ability for other groups to serve the needs of the the community. Another minor consideration is that a negative perception usually comes with the Food Bank because of the stigma associated with its clients. These clients may be unwelcome in certain communities due to the stigma, or the sheer number of visiting clients.
Process
To fulfill the purpose of the project, the team ensured the involvement of all the stakeholders of the RFB throughout the duration of the project. We scheduled an initial meeting with the volunteer coordinator of the RFB to get a better understanding of our role for the project and the issues the RFB are facing. The team also volunteered on a distribution day to experience the parking issue ourselves. That day, we had the opportunity to interact with the volunteers and talked with them to get their perspective of the parking issue. On another distribution day, the team conducted surveys and interviews with the clients of the RFB. In doing so, we were able to obtain several important pieces of information from all the stakeholders. Their interests and concerns guided the team in formulating our solutions.
The team used two different methods in finding possible sites the RFB can relocate to. First, we searched the Internet for warehouse listings on realtor websites and online classifieds that would meet all the criteria of the new warehouse location. For ones that we thought were potential relocation sites, we drove to the location to scout the area and the listed building. Secondly, we found all the appropriately zoned areas of Richmond using the City of Richmond’s interactive zoning map and drove along those regions to look for any sites that were for lease.
Findings
Due to time limit of the project, we decided to focus on the key stakeholders related to Richmond Food Bank, the clients, staffs and volunteers. We used surveys and interviews to understand their concerns about the current RFB location. From those concerns, we created location selection criterias to guide our search for new locations.
Clients
The 8 free parking spots for clients are definitely inadequate and the pay parking along the street will cause them unnecessary expenditures. Nearly half the clients uses public transit and they like the current location, because it is easily accessible by skytrains. However for those who drive, more parking spots would help them to save time, since they will not need to wait to get a parking spots, or wait in the car to avoid parking tickets.
Volunteers
From the interviews, we found that volunteers are most heavily impacted by the shortage of parking spots. Majority of the volunteers are seniors and some of them have long-term injuries, driving is their only option to come helping on the RFB distribution days. The insufficient of parking spots forced them to either get up early for the 14 parking spots at the bank of RFB or park at a distant location. A volunteer mentioned that if there is no nearby parking spots, then he/she would not come to help any more. Most volunteers are ok with carpooling or taking public transit. However some volunteers had several other volunteer activities, being able to drive allows them to decide their own schedules.
Staff
The staff also know about the parking issues, and they see this inadequate parking as a factor in preventing more people accessing RFB. They are also worried about the possibility that they might not be able to renew the lease. The real state market in Richmond has skyrocketed in the past a few years, the warehouse owner might decide to sell the land, or raise rent to a level which the RFB cannot afford. A new location will become necessary at that time. It would be great to have alternate options when it comes to that day. The current warehouse facilities are large enough to handle distribution during most of the year, however during peak season, such as Christmas, the warehouse sizes are smaller than the staff would like it to be, and it limits the amount of food they can store and distribute before expiry. The cost of the warehouse is less of a concern to RFB staff. The current location is close by several municipal welfare services. It would be great for the new location to be nearby social services so that people in need could be easily referred to use the food bank services.
From the survey results, we also gained insight in how people access RFB, and geographic locations where members of the RFB community are from. The following two graphs presented our findings. The red arrow shows the rough location where community members live.
More than a quarter of respondents including clients, volunteers or staff at the RFB would require parking spots. That is, of the 1500 people who access RFB on a weekly basis, over 400 people would need to find parking spots over the span of two distribution days. 37% of the members uses public transit as their main method of transports. This required us to consider the public transit accessibility in selecting the new locations.
Proposed Solution
From the main selection criteria we extracted from surveys and interviews:
1. Public Transit Accessibility
2. Sufficient parking spots
3. Similar or larger warehouse size
4. Nearby welfare services
5. Close to Richmond Center area
Based on those points, we searched Internet for warehouse listings online and we drove to potential locations to scout the surrounding area. We also found all the appropriated zoned areas in Richmond using the City of Richmond’s interactive zoning map and drove around those regions to look for any potential site.
The top selection we found is at 8791 Beckwith Road, Richmond. It’s indicated as the red star in the following graph.
The new location belongs to Light Industrial zoning which RFB fits the usage criteria. The warehouse size is 6200 SF, which is a 25% increase comparing with the nearly 5000SF[1] of the current location. The new location is 5 min walking distance to Bridgeport skytrain station and a major bus loop. Our onsite scouting shows there are sufficient parking spots to easily facilitate 80 or more cars. The cost of the lease is approximately $7000 per month, this is less than the $9000 of the current location. This location is only two skytrain stations away from the Richmond Center which makes it very accessible from that area. This also helps the RFB to remain close connection with other welfare services, which scattered within the Richmond Center area.
Pictures of the surrounding parking spaces in the new proposed locations:
Photos taken by Calvin Ching (2014)
The new location would help us to achieve our project goal, solving the short term parking issue and long term lease expiry issue.
Recommendations
Based on the findings presented in the section above we propose that the RFB adopt our recommendations. Specifically we believe that both of our proposed solutions should be pursued in parallel to address the short and the long term problems they are facing. From the onset the purpose of the project was to developed these recommendations regarding the parking problem and the potential areas for relocation. Based on the proposed solutions and our research, we recommend the RFB also take the following steps:
- Obtain feedback from the clients and volunteers of the RFB regarding the new location
- Contact the warehouse owner/landlord to get more information such as the lease duration, availability in two years, and permission for the RFB to operate
- Conduct surveys with surrounding business to see any potential backlash for the RFB to relocate to the new site
Our group also believes that for lobbying the municipal government a lawyer may be a helpful resources to consult, and there are pro bono lawyers in their area who may be able to help(www.accessprobono.ca).
Footnotes:
[1] It came to our attention at the presentation to the RFB that the initial figure provided to us by the staff ( 4000-5000 square feet) was incorrect, and that the actual size may be closer to 8000 Square feet.