Moncton Market moves, library stays put: downtown takes shape

City planner Sébastien Arcand wants to see the Moncton Public Library remain at or near its current location, and the Moncton Market relocated to the nearby parking lot off Downing Street.

Arcand, senior planner for the City of Moncton, said both ideas are key to the "rejuvenation" of the downtown and will be proposed at a public meeting Tuesday at 8 a.m. at the Capitol Theatre.

"Everywhere large and small cities are using libraries as a key piece of public infrastructure ... that is a key component of this plan for sure," Arcand said Monday.

The combination of market and library at Downing really creates something very powerful.- Jim Scott, landscape architect

The controversial idea of moving the library from Main Street to the site of the old Moncton High School, about one kilometre away on Church Street, has been suggested by the group MH Renaissance Inc., which hopes to redevelop the heritage property and make it a cultural centre with the library as a anchor tenant.

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Jim Scott, a landscape architect who is helping the city put together its downtown core community improvement plan, said having the Moncton Market and the library next to one another would have huge benefits for the downtown core.

"The combination of market and library at Downing really creates something very powerful," he said.

"Our thinking is when and if the market should move for whatever reason, it would want to go into that position."

New street proposed

Scott said there is not a plan to move the Moncton Market immediately from its Westmorland Street home, but planners are looking at a new street that would run from Downing Street toward the new downtown event centre.

"Should that occur, we will need to look at a new position to the market," he said. "It would be in a parking area and it would require that we would have to change some of the parking that is there today."

Many businesses have expressed concern about the loss of parking spaces, although Mayor Dawn Arnold has said eliminating much of the surface parking in the downtown core is key to future success.

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'Dispersed' parking for event centre

Scott and Arcand agreed that the "dispersed" parking plan for the new 8,500-seat event centre, at the western end of the downtown, is part of the larger vision for the downtown.

"The intent was always to have the downtown be the parking lot," Scott said.

He points to large cities such as Toronto and Montreal, where people heading to the Air Canada Centre or the Bell Centre park a few blocks away or take public transit to the event.

"If you do put large parking lots at a downtown centre there's no real reason for it to be downtown," he argued.

"One of the greatest things about going to the Bell Centre in Montreal ... is that walk and all that energy ... all of the hockey shirts you see on the way down, all of the people at the pubs — all of that energy is on the street for about five to eight blocks away from the centre. That's exciting and its good for business and it's good for living."

​Arcand said the completed plan for downtown Moncton, based in part on public input gathered at Tuesday's meeting, will be presented to Moncton city council and to the public in late August or early September.