The owner of Santa Lucia Pizza on St. Mary’s Road wants to convert an empty residential lot in Norwood Flats into a parking lot.

Greg Simeonidis purchased a home in 2014 with the intention of using the land to create additional parking for his customers and employees and to help ease some the parking concerns in the neighbourhood.

The lot is currently zoned to allow for the construction of a duplex, so Simeonidis’ plan would first need special approval before any changes to the lot can be made.

People who live in the area told CTV News finding parking can be a problem when the restaurant is busy.

The property Simeonidis is hoping to turn into a parking lot is located along Cromwell Street immediately south of the Santa Lucia Pizza on St. Mary’s Road.

Phase 1 of the plan proposes to create 18 additional parking spaces where a home once stood at 17 Cromwell Street.

The city said a rezoning application hasn’t been submitted, but Simeonidis said he plans to move ahead with one soon.

“All our customers, our staff, residents…there’s not enough parking,” said Simeonidis. “We knew we were short parking, we thought we found a solution.”

Simeonidis said he has met with St. Boniface Councillor Matt Allard and a representative from the city’s urban planning department to discuss his plans.

Allard said the urban planning department advised that it would likely not support an application that doesn’t have some type of structure on it, either residential space or mixed-use commercial space.

Simeonidis doesn’t want to build a new residential unit, he just wants to move ahead with a parking lot.

“Do I really need the parking lot to continue my business? No. Will it make it better for my employees and the staff and the neighbourhood? Definitely,” said Simeonidis. “If they tell me ‘don’t build’ I guess we don’t build in the long run and we have an empty lot to look at, it’s kind of silly.”

He currently rents parking spaces from nearby businesses to provide extra places for his employees to park.

Santa Lucia has started a petition looking for support from the community.