New parking needed in Cedar Rapids, but committee hesitant to endorse $21 million plan

Three downtown parking ramps will be coming down in the next few months, but a City Council committee says it needs more analysis before it leaps behind a plan to spend $21 million to build two new ramps to replace what is being lost.

The council's Infrastructure Committee on Tuesday deflected a proposal for now to hire an architectural team to design a 628-space, $11-million parking ramp along Second Street SE between Sixth and Seventh avenues SE that would provide parking for downtown businesses, visitors and employees of the new federal courthouse nearby.

City staff members told the committee that plans also are moving speedily ahead on a 550-space, $10-million parking ramp proposed to go up across First Avenue East from the Five Seasons Hotel, U.S. Cellular Center and new convention center.

The City Council has talked about both projects in recent months in generally favorable terms, but now the time has come to figure out where the money might come from to build them.

City Manager Jeff Pomeranz told the committee that work on the financial feasibility of each of the proposed ramps continues, and Pomeranz recommended the council committee hold off on any decisions about design until it and the full council have a discussion about what parking solutions it supports.

City Council members Tom Podzimek and Kris Gulick both suggested that employers, employees and property owners in the downtown be asked anew if they might be willing to use the city's sprawling, little-used, park-and-ride surface parking lot between Eighth and 12th avenues SE if the monthly space rental was small and the city provided continuous shuttle service into the downtown. The 1,200-space lot was built more than a decade ago with that very idea in mind, but there has been little interest in using it.

Would employers be willing to pay $20 or $25 a month for their employees to park there if the option was to pay $75 a month per employee to park in a new ramp on the downtown side of Eighth Avenue SE? Podzimek and Gulick wondered.

“It's worth talking to the stakeholders about it,” Gulick said.

Pomeranz noted that one downtown employer had said it would commit to 300 spaces in a new ramp at $75 a month per space and another said it might take 100 for the same amount.

Dave Elgin, the city's public works director, put the cost of a parking ramp at about $18,000 per space, and Gulick said it would take about $120 to $130 a month per slot over 20 years to pay to build the ramp. Podzimek noted, though, that the ramps would operate longer than 20 years and so the city could recoup some of its capital costs over a longer period of time.

The city continues to associate the proposed Second Street SE parking ramp with the new federal courthouse, which is slated to open in late 2012. However, Pomeranz answered a question from Podzimek by saying that the federal government is not willing to pay any money for the parking ramp's construction.

U.S. General Services Administration officials have made it clear in recent months that the agency does not pay to build parking ramps, and those officials have said they intend for most of the courthouse's employees to park in the city's park-and-ride lot across Eighth Avenue SE from the new courthouse.

Pomeranz said existing downtown businesses and the prospect of their expansion and the prospect of attracting other businesses have been the driving forces behind the new parking ramp on Second Street SE.

Council members wondered if private businesses might want to build a new parking ramp, and Pomeranz said some have mentioned such an idea, but he said he is not sure the city wants private parking ramps on certain pieces of valuable downtown property.

After the council committee meeting, council member Chuck Swore, the committee chairman, said it would be nice to build the two new parking ramps. However, Swore said a dependable shuttle service from the park-and-ride lot into the downtown might work as a “short-term” solution until money is found to build the Second Street ramp.

Swore thought the new ramp across from the hotel and Convention Complex was essential, but Gulick suggested that the existing Five Seasons Parkade near the hotel could be reserved for hotel and convention patrons and people who use that ramp now could be asked to use other parking spaces.

As for demolition, two private ramps in The Roosevelt block will be demolished in the coming weeks to make way for the new convention center. Demolition on the city's rickety, flood-damaged First Street Parkade will start after July 4.