Expert: Downtowns aren't suburban office parks or malls when it comes to parking

Downtowns aren't the suburbs, parking expert Dennis Burns, of national consulting firm Carl Walker Inc., told a forum last Friday sponsored by the Downtown District and City Hall.

Burns made his point as the discussion turned to surface parking lots, of which he said downtowns can have too many.

“The nature of a downtown is density,” Burns said at one point to a questioner advocating for more surface parking lots and free parking downtown.

“You wouldn't really have a downtown. You'd have an office park … and not the urban place you really want,” Burns said to the questioner.

The issue of surface parking lots has come to the forefront as the city's library board has said its top preference is for the city's proposed $45-million library to have a surface parking lot of 200 or more spaces. The flood-damaged library on First Street SE, which will not be rebuilt as a library, had about 40 slots plus on-street parking.

Some who have proposed building a new downtown city hall also have said a new building could have a surface parking lot that the Veterans Memorial Building, which had housed City Hall before the June 2008 flood, does not have.

Burns said the city of Winnipeg has come to see surface parking lots as “blight.” He said he liked the concept of “shared” parking, which means that parking spaces are shared by more than one user in recognition that not everyone works the same hours or is parking at the same time. Parking systems then need fewer spaces.

Burns said motorists often must walk farther from a spot in a mall parking lot into the mall than they must walk from a downtown parking ramp to an office. They just think the mall is closer because they can see it in front of them, he said.