Thursday, May 06, 1999
Parking bargains may be cut
Downtown plan seeks to free spaces
BY LUCY MAY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Shirley Colbert doesn't drive downtown much. The West End woman complains it's simply too tough to find parking.
Jennifer Venneman commutes downtown from Southgate every day for work. She has seen her parking costs increase from $15 a month in December 1997 to $5.50 a day now.
And that's if she gets downtown before 9 a.m.: “If you don't get here by 9 a.m., you're not going to have parking,” she said.
The two women illustrate the biggest parking challenges facing downtown Cincinnati: a lack of spaces for short-term visitors and ever-increasing rates for downtown workers.
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Downtown Cincinnati Inc., the downtown marketing group, has recommended several steps to ease downtown parking woes:
• Eliminate three-hours-for-$1 parking. The rate in city garages has helped draw people downtown, but people stay in those spaces too long. DCI suggests people will pay $3 for three hours and that the rates should escalate more quickly after that to discourage people from parking all day unless they pay monthly parking fees.
• Institute a $1 maximum day-long rate for weekends and a $1 maximum rate after 4 p.m. on weekdays. DCI suggests this could draw people downtown when parking is plentiful.
• Freeze monthly rates in city garages at Fountain Square until the city builds more parking. DCI suggests increases in monthly rates would appear opportunistic and could hurt downtown workers.
• Increase parking-meter rates. The typical downtown rate is 50Ä an hour. DCI suggests the hourly rate could go to 75Ä or be doubled in busy areas and lowered in areas on the fringes of downtown.
• Improve signage. DCI suggests the city and county invest in electronic signage to tell people where parking is available as soon as they enter downtown, say from Fort Washington Way.
• Publicize short-term rates. Even $1 an hour for three hours is much cheaper than private garages that charge $6 or $8 an hour, and DCI suggests the city do more to publicize those low rates. |
To alleviate those problems, Downtown Cincinnati Inc. (DCI), the downtown marketing group, has asked the city to eliminate three-hours-for-$1 parking at city garages and raise hourly fees at parking meters to increase turnover.
DCI also has asked the city to freeze monthly parking rates at the popular Fountain Square garages for downtown office workers.
“We think we've got to take some medicine here that's a little disagreeable,” said John Schneider, DCI's transportation adviser.
The trade-off recommended by DCI is instituting
an all-day $1 rate for city garages on weekends and a $1 flat rate for weekdays after 4 p.m. Mr. Schneider said those rates could encourage people to come downtown at times parking is most plentiful.
City parking division officials are considering the recommendations and will report on them in the coming weeks, said Chuck Cullen, the city's superintendent of parking. That report could go to city council later this month or in early June, he said.
“Both DCI and the city have the same goals. We want to be able to manage the existing parking better downtown and increase the supply of parking downtown,” Mr. Cullen said.
“It's just a question of how do we do that without straining the pocketbooks or patience of people using downtown parking.”
Mr. Cullen and Mr. Schneider agree it will be important to reach the right balance if the city raises parking fees: to increase turnover without making the parking so expensive that people won't come downtown.
Helen Thomas, co-owner of Skywalk Baseball Cards on Vine Street, worries that balance will be tough to reach. Eliminating the bargain rate of three hours for $1 could be tough on businesses, she said.
“I think the bargain pricing has helped alleviate the sting of the limited amount of parking,” she said. “I don't think that's the answer.”
Mrs. Colbert doesn't like the idea of higher-priced meters either.
“What they need to do is find accommoda tions for people to park,” she said.
Mr. Cullen said the city is studying possible sites to build a new garage downtown. To do that, the city's parking division must generate enough revenue from existing parking to pay for the new construction.
While the three-hours-for-$1 parking is popular, he said it never was intended as a permanent solution for downtown. And it doesn't generate much money the division can use to build a new garage.
“You can't buy a lot of bricks for 33Ä an hour,” he said.
A study done for DCI by local marketing consultant John Fox found that most regional visitors and business people with appointments downtown considered $3 for three hours of parking a “good value.”
Downtown parking has been tighter since construction on the new Bengals stadium and Fort Washington Way eliminated nearly 1,500 spaces on or near the riverfront, Mr. Cullen said. Of those spaces, between 800 and 900 were used regularly, he said.
In addition, the city has asked 125 monthly parkers in the Gramercy garage on Seventh Street to move to other garages by August to make room for residents of the new Shillito Lofts, he said.
Still, parking is available on the fringes of downtown — along the riverfront, near Broadway and Reading Road and north of the Albert B. Sabin Cincinnati Convention Center, said Jeff Jones, general manager of Central Parking System, which controls more than 50 percent of downtown's 30,000 parking spaces.
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