Quote:
Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark
The fact that it is also an entrance and exit to the parking garage takes away from it being pedestrian friendly as well. If you don't watch out you invariably will be in the way of a vehicle trying to get in/out of the building. I expect that traffic to increase exponentially once the hotel is opened.
On the parking topic, I decided to try it out last month, as I figured it's a convenient location, and hey... why not? What I found was a somewhat cavernous parking garage that had no clearly marked directions to be able to get to an exit that you could actually use. There were a couple of elevators that would have taken you into the Nova Centre but were not available to use for the public, so we, along with a group of other confused people who also chose to park there but couldn't find a way out, found ourselves walking around trying to understand how we could get outside. Finally, I had to use the speaker to security to ask how to get out, and even then it was not so easy to find the elevators that take you up to the bank area in Rogers dank dark hole, apparently the only exit acceptable to use for the general public. I shudder to think how one would get out of there in the event of an emergency.
With all that said, it is a nice, large parking garage, and knowing the layout will make things easier in the future. Make sure you bring your credit card, because that's the only accepted method of payment, and make sure you're OK with spending $20 to park there for a few hours. It's definitely not the cheapest place to park in the downtown.
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Not that I've tried very hard because I avoid downtown as much as possible these days, but I never could find a way into that garage. I assumed (incorrectly, obviously) that Rogers Square was pedestrian-only. I have yet to see signage either, though again, it isn't something I've actively been looking for recently.
The lack of directions for people inside the garage is troubling. I can't understand that deficiency.
I used to deal with the BMO branch on SGR and Queen, then its replacement across the street until that became too much of a pain to find parking. It was suggested I switch to their new main branch in Nova Centre. Uh, no. Apparently even the staff had big problems with the building there for the first year or so they were open.