Planning Commission Minutes 2014 04 10

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Planning Commission Meeting Minutes April; 10, 2014 Page 31of 37 Commissioner Russell asks so 40% to 60% utilization is over-utilization or what? Russ answers it is just being used. I want to point out thatthese are not just Downtown patrons. These are residents parking on the street. They are short parking just like Downtown is short parking. When you go to 9 am, you start to see the influence. The residents go to work, the workers come in, and the City lots are full or filling up. This is the Daycare facility, City Hall, parking facility. The library garage, interestingly enough, is not full at 9 am, so the City employees are not parking there. You do see Spruce, Walnut, and Lafargetrading out. Where Lafargewas orange at7am, it is now green because residents went to work. You are not seeing the influence of the restaurants at all; you are seeing the office workers. That is what 9 am tells us. When you go to 12 noon, you are starting to mixedoffice and restaurants. You see the on-street is now at 85% and you see a number of lots, both office and restaurant filling up to 60 to 85%. You start to see the neighborhoods gettingimpacted further out. Looking at Memory Square, this is Dolphin related. There were swim meets going on or practices going on. Downtown is not skipping a block and then impacting Memory Square. That was the Dolphins and their practice and the parents picking everybody up. At dinner time, we see the off-streets at Lucky Pie, the City facility, the bank, and the surface lots filling up. The Library is no longer green where it was occupied at 30% in 2010, it is now in the 60% to 85% range, but it is not full. There is a very different dynamic during the dayand, we don’t have a capacity problem. In the morning, we don’t have a capacity problem, we have a management problem. We know City Hall is open, we know the neighborhood streets closest to City Hall are being impacted, yet the Library garage is not being utilized. Thisis a management issue, not a capacity issue. What can we do to get the City employees or the office employees into the off-street spaces behind the Library, the old Library, or Lucky Pie. All of these public spaces are not being used because itis more convenient to park next to City Hall on a neighborhood street. There is no management going on. I do not think there is a capacity problem at 9 am; it is a management problem. Similarly, I do not believe there is a capacity problem at lunch; there is a management problem. However, at dinner, there is a capacity problem and a management problem and it is based on our ownership, not necessarily the ratio. We have a couple of options. We can build more capacity and manage it that way or we canlease some of the office users that are not being used at night. If you think of KoKo Plaza, there are 41 parking spaces with 35% to 45% utilization. Is there a deal to be made there,rather than building a garage? Finding capacity byeither building spaces or leasing spaces without a management strategy, we still cannot push patrons to take longer walk. We can make the walk as pleasant as we can but we need management. We do believe there is a capacity and management problem at night. We presented this data to the residents and the business owners and pretty much everyone was nodding their heads. This study actually from 7 am to 7 pm illustrated the problems well. We did not hear anyone disagreeing with the data.