Library parking: How does a two-story, on-site ramp compare to a multistory one a skywalk skip away?

Plentiful parking -- preferably free, close to the building and in a surface parking lot, not a parkade -- became something of a mantra for the city's library board as it worked in recent weeks to recommend a preferred site for a new $45-million library.

However, on the eve of the City Council's scheduled Wednesday evening vote to pick a library site, Library Director Bob Pasicznyuk reports that he and the library board have tweaked their thinking on parking.

In particular, Pasicznyuk n0w says the library board's first choice and second choice for a library site likely will include a two-story parking ramp on the site rather than a surface parking lot in an adjacent block.

This is a revelation that may surely spark some discussion from a group of council members who favor a third site for the library, the TrueNorth site, which sits across railroad tracks easily leaped by a future skywalk from the 924-slot, half-empty, city-owned Fourth Avenue parkade. There would be on-street parking, too, TrueNorth backers point out.

Pasicznyuk, though, says the two-story ramps he's talking about would not be  a “traditional parkade or ramp.”

Council member Don Karr, for one, this week was still trying to figure out which library site he liked with cost being his central point of interest. But he said one thing he didn't like about the earlier proposal for the Emerald Knights block was the proposed parking ramp on the block that would front on busy First Avenue East. There's one of those ramps just down the block on First Avenue East, and it looks ugly, Karr said.

Pasicznyuk said there are ways to design two-level ramps to look almost like parks.

“I think we can make it so it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb,” he said. “I don't think that will be an issue.”

A few weeks ago, the library board proposed buying and demolishing the People's Church for a surface parking lot next to the board's preferred site for the library, the block which now is home to The Gazette and KCRG-TV9.

The library board's second choice of sites, the Emerald Knights block, is a busier spot and has no adjacent blocks suitable for a surface parking lot, so the board had planned for a three-story parking ramp there. Pasicznyuk says now that the Emerald Knight's three-story ramp likely will be a two-story one, too, if the council chooses that site.

In the weeks since the library board picked the Gazette Communications block as its preferred site with plans for a surface parking lot next door, the Downtown District brought a parking expert to Cedar Rapids. He concluded that downtowns aren't suburbs and that surface parking lots in the downtown actually can take on the character of urban “blight.”

This week, Pasicznyuk suggested that he had heard the “concerns” about surface parking lots and how they didn't work with the city's downtown plan.

“So we listened to that,” the library director said. “So if we occupy the Gazette site – although this isn't set – we've talked about doing it with a two-level situation.”

Initially, the library board had said its preference was for 320 slots of parking for the library, a figure based on a read of the Cedar Rapids city specifications that Pasicznyuk said suggest 3 slots for every 1,000 square feet of building space.

Interestingly, Pasicznyuk said the new library, which had been proposed to be 105,000 square feet, actually might end up being a little smaller because of cost and new space assumptions. At the same time, he said he thinks the library parking need is closer to 200 to 220 slots after talks he's had with librarians elsewhere.

About 30 or 40 slots at the peak time of day would be used by staff members, he said.

Pasicznyuk said the library board's concern about parking stems from a clear message from patrons. Some 85 percent of patrons in past surveys have told the library board that the number one problem with the former, now-flood-wrecked library on First Street SE was parking. The First Street SE facility had a parking lot with about 40 slots, on-street parking and skywalk access to a nearby parking ramp.

For those who point to the parkade next to the TrueNorth site as an asset to that site, Pasicznyuk is quick to note that the parkade next to the former library didn't prevent library patrons from saying that the “single biggest problem of why they didn't use the library” was accessible parking.

“My concern is that when patrons come, they say, ‘Gosh, it's a lot easier for me to do my business elsewhere,'” the library director said. That, he added, can mean patrons choosing to go to libraries in Marion and Hiawatha instead of to a library in downtown Cedar Rapids.