The Costs of McEuen Parking
The estimated costs for McEuen Park were released this morning and, not surprisingly, a huge hunk of the costs for the park are in the parking facility. We still think this is both unfortunate and unnecessary. The total McEuen project costs, according to the released estimates (pdf), range from $23.8 million to $28.0 million.
Although drowned out by noisier complaints about the boat launch (and maybe to a lesser extent Tubbs Hill), the design of the Front Avenue parking facility remains a big gripe of ours. It provides an oversupply of parking, in the wrong location, and in a manner that physically and visually separates downtown from the park and lakefront. Now that the cost figures have been released, the problems are even more clear.
Team McEuen estimates Front Avenue parking to cost from $7.0 million to $8.3 million and other Front Avenue improvements to cost from $1.2 million to $1.4 million. In other words, Front Avenue and its parking consumes about one third of the cost of the entire project. Moreover, these costs do not include a second below-street ”Centennial Level” of parking, which has been shown on previous Team McEuen illustrations (as shown above). This newly “alternate” lowest level of parking would add another $5.5 million to $6.5 million.
A better, cheaper, and more functional location for downtown and McEuen parking is not under Front Avenue, but on vacant and underutilized properties north of Sherman. Construction and design costs are likely to be much lower, and the more central location would be much better for the future economic development purposes of downtown. We think the investment in improvements to McEuen Park are worth doing, but only if the investments are in the park itself, not a parking facility.
I’ve long advocated having a parking structure a few streets further north from Front. Personally, I think a location on the block defined by 3rd, 4th, Coeur d’Alene, and Lakeside would be ideal, or even a block north of that (defined by 3rd, 4th, Indiana, and Coeur d’Alene.
A parking structure can be a multi-use facility including shop space for new businesses in the area, and it would encourage foot traffic through downtown to McEuen and Tubbs Hill, increasing walk-bys of existing local businesses. It’s only 3 blocks away from the Post Office, 3 blocks away from City Park, and 4 blocks away from the Coeur d’Alene Resort. Only about 1/3 mile.
In addition to encouraging foot traffic through the downtown area and serving as additional merchant space, a parking structure at one of these locations would likely ease traffic woes, especially on event nights. If any of you has been to watch the Holiday Parade or 4th of July fireworks, you know how bad traffic can be. Now imagine cramming 954 more cars (current parking is 480) into the area right next to McEuen and Tubbs. It would be an absolute nightmare getting out of that very congested area on an event night.
I definitely support a new parking structure in the downtown area, even if it is the underground one proposed in the McEuen plan. Parking downtown right now is bad already, and definitely needs to be expanded. But I too believe a better solution would be building a structure north of Sherman.
[...] of the replacement parking plans — we think the replacement parking is still oversupplied, expensive, and incorrectly located — but the controversy itself is perhaps a good sign. The more we [...]