FC wants to boot parking issue

FORT COLLINS — Randy Hensley said his life sometimes feels like one big complaint.

“I get complaints all the time, everyday,” he said.

Hensley is parking-services manager for the city of Fort Collins. The complaints, he said, are usually related to the apparent shortage of parking in the downtown district.

Hensley said there are actually plenty of places to park downtown, it’s just that most of them are not free or convenient.

“Currently, we do not have a parking shortage on the aggregate level,” Hensley said.

There are 9,633 parking spaces in the downtown area, he said. Of those, 3,248 are free on-street parking spaces, but the parking there is limited to two hours at a time.

While drivers circle the block looking for a free place to park, Hensley said, 40 percent of the charge-to-park spaces in the downtown parking garages remain unfilled.

“We’ve got it backwards,” Hensley said. “The most convenient parking spaces should be the most expensive.”

To this end, the city is considering bringing paid parking back to prime downtown locations.

“It’s not designed to be a revenue-generating measure for the city,” Hensley said. (Last year, the city collected $441,000 in parking violations and another $767,000 from paid parking.) “The reasoning behind it is the economic benefit of providing parking-space turnover in front of retail establishments.”

Apparently, many people who work in downtown offices park in the free spaces in front of the stores, leaving potential customers to circle the blocks in frustration.

“Merchants come downtown around eight or nine in the morning to open their shops and all the spots are full,´ said David Short, executive director of the Fort Collins Downtown Business Association. “That’s a pretty clear sign of who’s parking there.”

City parking officials presented an assessment of the situation — as well as options for a paid parking system — to the DBA in mid-February.

“The DBA is very much supportive of it,” Short said. “But we want to make sure it’s the right thing and that it will work properly.”

The DBA will hold a merchants meeting on Feb. 25 to discuss the issue and the Downtown Strategic Plan in general.

“Most of the feedback we’ve gotten so far is in support of it,” Short said.

But Jane Tester, who has owned the Old Corner Book Shop in Old Town since 1975, said she doesn’t think it’s such a good idea.

Tester remembers when there were parking meters downtown. Most of them were removed in the late 1970s in an effort to revive a depressed downtown.

“I didn’t like them then, and I don’t like the idea now,” she said. “We already compete heavily with the big malls. I think parking meters would further harm our visibility.”

Tester spends $216 a year for her own off-street parking space and urges her employees not to park on the street.

Bernhard Wilkins, owner of City Drug on the corner of Mountain and College avenues, said he’s not sold on the idea, either.

“I don’t think making people pay 25 cents an hour is really going to address the issue of the parking problem,” he said. “I’d like to see a study that shows these are effective.”

Wilkins said he’s certain that the parking situation negatively affects his business. That’s why he pays $150 a month to a nearby property owner for five parking spaces reserved for his customers.

Debbie Reider, co-owner of Garwoods Jewelers, 131 S. College Ave., is a DBA board member and participates in the citizen’s advisory group for the Downtown Strategic Plan.

“At first, I was really opposed to the idea,” Reider said. “But the more I think about it, the more I think it could be a good idea if it’s done correctly.”

Reider hears customer complaints about parking almost daily. “The question is, how do you help customers understand that there’s value in this idea,” she said. “How can we get them to accept that all of a sudden we’re charging for something that was free.”

The entire concept is still in the preliminary phases. The Fort Collins City Council will review the matter in a study session on Feb. 25.

If the idea gains approval, the city will then decide what technology to use. Hensley said today’s parking meters are more attractive these days, and even have the ability to identify meter feeders and charge them more for successive hours.

Another possible method is the modern pay-parking machines, similar to the system already in use at the city’s Mason Street parking lot between Oak Street and Mountain Avenue, where users pay 50 cents an hour for as long as they need to park.

The most important aspect is assuring that any system selected would be user-friendly and charge short-term users nominal fees, Hensley said.

“There is no way we would ever create a situation that would discourage people from coming downtown,” he said.

The city council is scheduled to vote on the comprehensive parking plan in July as part of the larger Downtown Strategic Plan.

If the council approves on street-paid parking, Hensley said it would likely be January 2004 before the first system would be activated.

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