If you're planning to catch some of the Memorial Cup action at the WFCU Centre, you will want to bring along cash for parking -- normally free.
Council has approved a parking fee of $10 per vehicle at the arena. That is for general parking as well as 850 additional parking spaces on rented land.
“If you go around various arenas throughout the province, country and even internationally, parking is not an uncommon charge for events of this size,” says Ken Pretli of the event organizing committee.
Mayor Drew Dilkens says it is designed as a 'cost-recovery' measure to offset costs incurred from renting the Farhi land for 850 additional spaces during the Memorial Cup play downs, hosted in Windsor in late May.
“We’re going to be collecting revenue, and the goal is to break even,” said Dilkens after Monday’s council meeting.
“We want to be able to make sure the visitors to Windsor, the people who bought tickets to the Memorial Cup can park close enough to have a good experience and leave the City of Windsor with a positive impression,” he said.
Dilkens tells CTV News VIP ticket holders will not pay for parking, as that cost is already built into the price of their admission.
The event planning committee also backed down from a request for a $78,000 waiver of fees from the city, saying they found room in their budget and pulled that request off the table.
But they did ask the city to ensure that options are available for people who don’t want to pay for parking.
"One of the things we requested when we discussed this that there would be an option for a free shuttle so if people didn't want to pay for parking that there would be an option to attend the event for free," says Pretli.
