Downtown garage round-up

On Friday the city announced plans to build two garages downtown. Here’s the story in the Dispatch.

The garages will be financed with lower-interest city bonds, but Coleman said that won’t affect city finances. The bonds will be paid off through parking fees and a special assessment on property owners around 4th and Gay.

Details are still fuzzy: No land has been purchased, no architectural plans have been drawn, and no estimate of the total cost has been made.

On Monday, Coleman will ask the Columbus City Council to approve $600,000 for the Capitol South Community Urban Redevelopment Corp. to move forward on acquiring land and designing the two garages.

The nonprofit Capitol South group already controls 6,000 Downtown parking spaces and would be the likely operator for the new garages.

Oh, they’re the ones will all those parking lots.

Such projects are financially unattractive for private parking companies and Downtown corporations because of relatively low parking rates in Columbus, city officials and parking operators said.

I don’t get it. If Columbus has low parking rates, why not just eliminate some or all of these nonprofit parking lots? Are the proposed garages supposed to attract new parking?

Columbusite has a nasty map identifying city parking- it must be seen to be believed. The blogger writes:

Granted, there will be parking garages built instead of surface lots which is an improvement, though a minor one. However, we should ask ourselves what kind of businesses we want downtown. Look at any vibrant city and you’ll see that you can fit in a lot more urban-friendly businesses downtown than suburban ones which require lots of parking.

Massey at columbusING did up a Google map and writes:

Nothing breaks up the fluidity of an urban environment more than parkings structures and surface lots. They house idle machines while giving vagrants and derelicts targets to burglarize, in addition to places to loiter. Not to mention they are always hideous. That may be overly cynical, but I cannot see this move as anything more than kowtowing to urban sprawl. If we want downtown Columbus to feel vibrant and alive, filling it with more parking decks is not the answer. Creating a collection parking structures will only serve to allow people to come in and out downtown as they choose. Sure, they may contribute to the economy but it will never help downtown realize its potential.

Finally, Paul Bonneville at Columbus RetroMetro supports the garages:

The most important detail to keep in mind about the new parking garages is that they are not only replacing lost spaces, but they are also relocating those spaces closer to the business core of downtown closer to where the highest density of workers are located.

As far out there as it may sound, this is actually a good first step towards being able to develop transit alternatives. Stow away any ideals you have about Columbus being auto-independent for the time being.

The question has arisen though: should those lost spaces be replaced? Seems to me that in order for the city to go ahead with the garages, they need to say that they’re vital for future development, and in order for the garages to be built by the city (or its nonprofit), it needs to say that parking demand is low and no private company would be interested. Can these both be true?