Plans to restore a row of crumbling heritage buildings and erect a 14-storey mechanized parkade above would directly violate the downtown parking policy, officials warned Calgary Planning Commission on Thursday.

Heritage developer Neil Richardson’s proposal would revive the ramshackle row of mostly century-old retail buildings at Seventh Avenue, opposite the 1st Street S.W. LRT platform. But rather than fund the conversion of those storefront units into space for arts groups by building an office tower above, he’s proposed a European-style automated parking structure — to Richardson, a safer economic bet.

But this would be the privately developed first above-ground parkade for downtown Calgary in decades, and fly in the face of city hall’s long-standing policy to sharply restrict parking and limit traffic influx into the core.

“This would be a shift. It could be seen as a precedent,” said planning general manager Rollin Stanley. The planning commission may pass it when the plan comes back early next year, as commissioners struggle to balance heritage and parking policies, and to understand why parking is Richardson’s solution.

Richardson, who has for years been soliciting investors for the parkade plan, said he’s pitching more than a stand-alone parkade. The plan includes a rooftop restaurant and some arts facility offices among the 388 parking stalls, as well as a 40-foot “video wall” that he describes as public art.

The man behind the Lougheed Building restoration reasoned that it doesn’t make economic sense to plot a typical skinny office development in the centre of the block in between a United Church and The Palomino Smokehouse.

Richardson expressed frustration about the delay and bureaucrats’ opposition, but said in an interview he expects council to ultimately approve his proposal on a block that has long been seen as a blight on downtown. An alternative project without a parkade wouldn’t likely incorporate the old buildings, he warned.

“I don’t want this to sound vindictive, because it sort of does, but we will probably get the architects to design something on the site that will be marketable in today’s world, without heritage buildings,” Richardson said in an interview. “Just rip the mid-block site down.”

Ald. Druh Farrell, who sits on the commission, said she can’t approve the project as proposed, saying she’s wary of the massive parking structure since she wants heritage preservation. But she, and other commission members, signalled they could support the proposal with some tweaks.

“Nobody is saying it couldn’t be great,” said Jyoti Gondek, an urban sociologist.

But planners and commissioners found many concerns with Richardson’s proposal. With access from the laneway between the transit-only Seventh Avenue and pedestrian-only Stephen Avenue, it’s one of the least accessible areas by car. The city rejected the developer’s traffic impact. “There was an opposition just to the fundamental use, as well,” planner Dave Golsaka told the panel.

The parkade would let a driver drop off a car on a mechanized lift platform, which would shift the vehicle into an available space and retrieve it for pickup.