Downtown District hopes for a hearing on parking proposal

The Cedar Rapids Downtown District wants to drive traffic – and business development - downtown by making parking a non-event.

“We want people to come downtown because they want to go to Zins or TCR or enjoy a show at the Paramount,” said Vanessa Solesbee, operations director for the Downtown District.” We don't want them not coming downtown because of parking. We don't want business looking to locate downtown having a bad customer service experience because there is no parking.”

So the Downtown District is asking the City Council to approve a four-year lease, giving it management responsibility for the 3,200 parking spaces in the parkades and as many as 1,100 on-street parking slots. The city also would commit to making $1 million a year toward deferred maintenance costs. Those costs, along with future capital needs are estimated to be $8 million.

The council is expected to set a Dec. 14 public hearing on the plans.

It's simply good public policy, according to Downtown District CEO Doug Neumann, who said Nov. 23 the Downtown District can make the system financially self-sufficient rather than shift the cost of operating six parkades to city taxpayers.

“Essentially, the choice the city has is to accept our proposal and have $300,000 to reinvest in the system or it's the taxpayers' turn,” Neumann said. “There are no reserves left to sustain a negative operating system. General fund taxpayer dollars will be the only way to sustain this system is it continues to operate on the status quo.”

The city, he said, has operated the parking system at a loss for 10 years by spending down what was once a $14 million reserve. It's gone.

If properly managed – including significant infrastructure improvements, the parking system can support itself, attract business and visitors to the downtown area and grow the property tax base.

The city has too many community-wide concerns to make downtown parking one of its top priorities. On the other hand, Neumann said, it always will be at the top of the Downtown District's list.

Under the Downtown District plan, the city would maintain ownership of the parking facilities but turn management over to the downtown development group. It believes it can realize $305,000 in net revenues the first year with 10 percent of that going to the city for a parking incentive fund.

Neumann's goal is to make parking an economic development tool to fill downtown office space and increase traffic to downtown businesses and attractions. It possible, he said, to grow the taxable valuation by 40 percent by 2018 by properly managing parking.

“I want to fill downtown,” he said. “I don't want commercial space vacancies. I don't want a tax base that was eroded $28 million in the flood to never return to 2008 or better levels.”

The downtown parking situation has resulted in the loss of jobs and businesses, he said.

“There absolutely have been economic development prospects that walked away from opportunities downtown because we didn't have a good solution for them on parking,” he said. “It's inexcusable. There are solutions.”

One possible hitch in the plan is what to do with six city employees who work for the parking system. It's possible they could take other jobs with the city. If they go to work for the private entity that manages the day-to-day parking operations, they would take a hit financially, Neumann said. The union employees' wages are about 38 percent above the national average for similar positions, he said. Under the private management structure, their wages would fall about 29 percent, but remain slightly above the industry average.