Planning Commission Minutes 2014 04 10

Home Browse Search

Planning Commission Meeting Minutes April; 10, 2014 Page 30of 37 look at 2009 when we did the studyofDowntown, we had less occupancy and less vibrancy. We didn’t look at Special Events and we didn’t look into Old Town at all in the neighborhood. You look at 2014 and we updated. Downtown is very different now. We’re occupied and we’re vibrant. It is a very different situation. We didn’t have new development. The only new development we added to Downtown was the rooftop of the Rex. That was the only additional square footage. Otherwise, we occupied our buildings with successful businesses. So we studied it. What is the difference between an empty downtown and a full downtown?We also looked in the Old Town neighborhood from Caledonia to Grant to Parkview and the surrounding areas. We looked at Old Town at 7 am, 9 am, 12 noon, and 7 pm. We wanted 7 am because we wanted to know how Old Town was doing without the influence of Downtown. We looked at Downtown,every house,from 8 am until 8 pm, and we wrote down every license plate that we saw in Downtown. We looked at all the private lots and all the public streets. It was a much more robust parking analysis. In addition to that, we looked at Street Faire. At the night we looked at Street Faire, it was a Samantha Fish concert. We wanted to know what is the influence of Street Faire which is very positive on Downtown in the parking numbers? Downtown studied in 2009 is shown in the red-dashed area. This parking study did not entirely includeOld Town but a significant portion of it and itssurrounding. Looking at the comparison of 2009/2010 to 2013, the colors show utilization. Purple means the facility is full and at 85% or higher. Red, orange, yellow, and green are shown. In 2010, we saw on-street being used between 60-85% but off-street, under30% on the surface lots. Our strategy back then was to extend the reach of the pedestrian, get them to walk further from asurface lot, and create that environment so they can actually use it. That is an overall average. The diagram on the right is the overall average for the three days, excluding Street Faire. Downtown’s on-street facilities were seeing an 85% throughout the day andhigher utilization on the surface lots but not full utilization. Basically, you are seeing the City lots and bank getting far higher utilization in 2013 than we saw in 2010.Then we did Street Fairewith the influence with the concert.All streets withina quarter mile are 85% or higher. In our number, interestingly enough, we have ratios that are 105% and 110% of our parking capacity because people were blocking driveways when we counted. We calculated the capacity of the street and founds we were far in excess of 100% on a number of streets. I think the largest one was 120% of capacity. I am not sure too many people got in and out of their driveways at that time. You can see the influence. The black streets wereclosed during Street Faire. You are starting to see the quarter mile reach. You can see Caledonia, Short, and South are not really getting influenced on the furthest reaches of it, but thediagram goes north on Main Street and west on Walnut to Lincoln.Street Faire is an anomaly. It is nine nights a year and you cannot plan your community around that. You try to manage it. From a Planning parking perspective, we looked at just the three days other than Friday, and looked at how is it in the morning at the peak hours. This is what Old Town operates on the remaining three days,Saturday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. At 7 am, we see a number of streets already between 45% and 60% occupied. That has no influence whatsoever on Downtown. Old Town is under parked and these are residents parking on the street. Lafargefrom Spruce to Short with no influence of Downtown is already at 40% to 60% capacity.