Parking downtown Nanaimo: free hours, meter fees and parkades

On Monday, March 2, 2026, the curbside kiosks on Commercial, Wallace and Cavan streets started taking money again. For the previous 17 months, parking downtown Nanaimo had cost nothing on 255 street stalls, as long as drivers moved on within two hours; from that morning it was back to $0.25 for 12 minutes and $1.25 an hour. The one visible novelty was a QR code. The City of Nanaimo had added mobile payment through Hotspot, the same system it already used on the streets beside the hospital.

The switch back closed a long argument about whether downtown parking should be free or paid, one the city has had more than once.

The 2014 strategy: more meters, higher rates

The modern version of that argument starts with a council decision in August 2014. On August 12 the city announced that council had approved changes to its parking management strategy for downtown and the Old City Quarter: pay parking would be installed over two years, free on-street parking downtown would be eliminated, and rates would rise at meters, lots and parkades. The release noted that downtown on-street rates had last gone up in 2004.

The city gave four reasons: to cover future maintenance and operating costs, to keep vehicles turning over, to reduce congestion in nearby residential streets and to raise revenue for the parking system. It projected an extra $872,500 a year once the plan was fully in place in 2016, and said the higher rates would let it maintain and repair its parkades without dipping into general revenue. Resident-only parking was to expand to Nob Hill and the upper streets of the Old City Quarter. In exchange, the plan kept the Bastion Street parkade free on weekends and promised more than 1,300 free parking spaces every evening. Rod Davidson, then the city's manager of parking services, said the changes would ensure "there's a consistent turnover of vehicles downtown and in the Old City Quarter."

Free evenings and weekends, 2015 and 2016

The fees were barely in place before the city started giving some of them back. On January 28, 2015, it announced a promotion with the Downtown Nanaimo Business Improvement Association: on-street meters downtown and the Bastion parkade on Skinner Street would be free every evening and on weekends through 2015. The Harbourfront parkade and the Vancouver Island Conference Centre parkade stayed paid. Davidson called it "an important step in working with the DNBIA in attracting more users to the downtown of Nanaimo," and the city tied it to the downtown revitalization goals in its strategic plan.

Council renewed the partnership in February 2016, calling the first year a success. The city's release gave no figures for how many more people came downtown, or what the free hours cost in lost meter revenue, so the success was asserted rather than shown.

Those two releases set the pattern for the decade that followed. Pay parking was the rule, and free parking was something the city offered to the business association for a defined period, usually to lure shoppers downtown.

Construction and 17 months of free parking

The longest free spell came with the Commercial Street rebuild. Work on the first phase of the Design Commercial project began on September 3, 2024, closing the street to vehicles between Wharf Street and Church and Chapel streets. On September 9, councillors voted unanimously to suspend paid street parking around the project and replace it with a flat two-hour limit. Steven Johns, owner of Red Shelf Decor and a member of the Downtown Nanaimo Business Association, told NanaimoNewsNOW that parking was the concern businesses and customers raised most, and that only about 17 spots were still open on Commercial Street.

Johns also asked council to make the nearby parkades free, and that is where the debate split. City staff said monthly pass holders and contractually reserved stalls would create an equity problem if parking were free across a wide area. Staff floated turning part of 1 Port Drive, near Port Place Shopping Centre, into a temporary lot, an idea that got little support. Councillor Ben Geselbracht said the distance from downtown would keep people from using it and asked whether a share of the parkade, perhaps 10 per cent, could be set aside for free two-hour parking instead. The city estimated that waiving street fees would cost about $55,000 in lost revenue over the project.

Free two-hour street parking started on October 1, 2024, on Commercial Street south of Wharf, Front, Chapel, Church and Bastion streets, Anchor Way and Cameron Road. Mayor Leonard Krog said council had heard from partners, the public and downtown business owners, and had responded. At the October 21 meeting, Councillor Hilary Eastmure said business owners were telling her it was not enough and moved for a staff report on free two-hour parking in city parkades; the motion passed unanimously, although Krog noted that an earlier report had found significant complexities in doing so. On December 3, 2024, levels 2 and 3 of the Bastion Street parkade became free for up to two hours on weekdays, with all levels free on evenings and weekends. "This free parking comes just in time for holiday shopping," Krog said.

The construction ran long. Phase one had been scheduled from early September 2024 to the end of May 2025, but NanaimoNewsNOW reported it was not substantially complete until late July 2025, with a further unplanned closure between Bastion and Wharf streets from August 11 to 15. The city said $4 million of the $6.2 million project came from the provincial Growing Communities Fund.

Paid again from March 2, 2026

The city announced the end of the free spell on February 19, 2026. Bill Sims, general manager of engineering and public works, said pay parking was there to manage demand and "ensure spaces are available for visitors when they need them." The release leaned on the 2019 Downtown Mobility Hub study, which it said found enough parking downtown overall but an imbalance between high- and low-demand areas. The free two-hour parking on the Bastion parkade ended the same day.

The city told NanaimoNewsNOW which stalls were converting back:

Downtown streets stay free after 5 p.m. and all day on Sunday. If you only need a few minutes, the 12-minute increment is still the cheapest unit on the meter, and the city's Parking Services page says it treats an area as over capacity once it passes 85 per cent occupancy.

Where to park downtown now

Off the street, the city runs a set of lots and parkades with a common rate card: $0.75 for the first two hours, $1 for each additional hour, $7 for 12 hours and $9 for 24. The Harbour Front parkade at 51 Gordon Street and the Vancouver Island Conference Centre parkade at 101 Gordon Street charge around the clock, seven days a week, and offer monthly passes at $110; 101 Gordon is also the address of the Vancouver Island Conference Centre, whose promised hotel took until 2023 to arrive. The Bastion Street parkade at 236 Bastion has a $75 monthly pass, and the Cavan Street and Wallace-Wentworth lots $60.

Two lots sit outside that pattern. The Maffeo Sutton Park lot, which the city lists at 100 Comox Street on one page and 150 Comox Street on another, gives the first three hours free on weekdays and is free on evenings, weekends and statutory holidays, which makes it the lot the city recommends for Newcastle Island visitors at $9 per 24 hours. Next to the lot, the park is getting a permanent amenity building with universal washrooms, because the existing ones cannot cope with event crowds. The lot at 336 Prideaux Street is listed as free at all times.

The city's own pages do not quite agree with each other. The rates page lists the Bastion parkade as paid from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Saturday, free in the evenings and on Sundays, while the where-to-park page, updated the same day, says it is free on evenings, weekends and statutory holidays. Saturday is the gap between them. Holders of a valid SPARC permit can park free for up to two hours at city street meters and up to four hours in city lots or parkades where permitted. The city's Parking Services page also gives a sense of why new parkades are rare: it puts the cost of structured parking at more than $100,000 per stall in 2022 dollars.

Pay parking has also spread beyond downtown. From April 1, 2024, the city began charging on the streets around Nanaimo Regional General Hospital after residents complained about parking pressure, and it now charges $1.25 an hour there with a two-hour limit, Monday to Saturday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The hospital's own lots are not part of that system. Inside is what Global News called the busiest emergency department on the island, regularly treating more than 400 inpatients in a 345-bed building in 2024.

Parking at Departure Bay

The other place where Nanaimo drivers most often pay to park is the ferry terminal at Departure Bay, at 680 Trans-Canada Highway. BC Ferries says the lot is run independently by Robbins Parking and lists 526 spaces: 177 short-term and 349 long-term. Short-term parking costs $1 per 30 minutes for up to two hours, or $28 per 24 hours. Long-term parking is $8 for six hours and $18 per 24 hours, then $9 for each additional 12-hour block.

Payment is by the HONK or PayByPhone apps, which need a licence plate number, or by Visa, Mastercard or American Express. The coin meters take exact change only, except for one yellow meter in the long-term lot that takes bills and gives change. Drivers who pay by card and enter a mobile number get a text before their time runs out and can extend it, up to 24 hours. The terminal closes overnight, and BC Ferries warns that staying on the property outside service hours is not allowed. Since October 2025 vehicles sailing the other way, from Horseshoe Bay to Departure Bay, have needed a paid booking, a rule BC Ferries ties to Horseshoe Bay getting back to its full operating configuration.

The small unresolved detail is the one on the Bastion parkade: as of the city's pages updated in February 2026, whether a Saturday afternoon there is free depends on which page you read.