Parking expert says city needs parking meters that take credit cards; surface parking lots can be 'blight,' he warns

The city and the Downtown District should consider installing multi-space parking meters downtown that let motorists pay for parking with a credit or debit card, said a national parking expert during a lunchtime parking forum on Friday.

Dennis Burns, vice president of parking consultant Carl Walker Inc., told the gathering of about 85 in The Ballroom of the Crowne Plaza Five Seasons Hotel that multi-space meters, which service several parking spots from one meter, “de-clutter” downtown streets and actually increase parking revenue by making it easier for parkers to pay to park.

Burns also noted that the Cedar Rapids City Council put in place a special, $30-a-month rate in downtown parking ramps after the June 2008 flood to help encourage businesses and people to return to the downtown. The council has talked about returning the monthly fee to pre-flood rates of $50 or $60 a month, but Burns recommended raising the rates in increments. The downtown is still in “transition” as it recovers from the flood, he said.

Those who attended the forum - sponsored by the Downtown District and the city of Cedar Rapids - had plenty of thoughts on how to improve the city-owned system, which already has undergone one significant change since August: the city of Cedar Rapids now employs Republic Parking System, which manages systems in Rochester, Minn., Lincoln, Neb., Ann Arbor, Mich., and elsewhere, to run the operation.

Among suggestions for improvement: Use signage and public education so customers, visitors and employees know where parking is and at what cost; insist that parking ramps are clean, well-maintained, well-lit and safe; more accurately allot spaces to businesses so attractively placed slots don't sit empty; add better technology; use the system to drive economic development; police on-street parking so it is used by visitors and customers, not employees; think first about customers and not employees in assigning spaces in ramps.

After the forum, Vanessa Solesbee, Downtown District operations director, said the real issue facing the downtown parking system is money. Even so, she said it might be possible to install some credit-card-taking, multi-space meters in the core of the downtown this year through a program in which the meter company fronts the cost.

Solesbee said the Downtown District believes that parking rates do need to increase to a degree to assure the parking system has adequate revenue to operate and invest.

In the 90-minute forum, Burns presented what he considered were great ideas for parking ramps, some of which have been discussed at City Hall for a couple years now. Examples included a parking ramp flanked on both ends by residential units, and a building with shops on the ground level, four levels of parking above that and residential units above the parking. He said something like would be perfect on First Street SE,

which now has an aged parking ramp only partly in use and slated for demolition.

Burns said the city should promote “shared” parking so the system doesn't need more spaces than necessary. He said a city also should have fewer, not more surface parking lots, and he noted that the city of Winnipeg actually considers downtown surface parking lots “blight.”

He liked the concept of underground ramps, and he showed off one with a park on top of it. It looked similar to the May's Island lawn between the Veterans Memorial Building and the Linn County Courthouse which sits atop an underground parking garage.