Press Release
City Set to Build Two Downtown Parking Garages
City and Capitol South Partnering to add 1,455 spaces
Rendering 1 | Rendering 2 | Front Street
Addressing one of the top concerns facing businesses, workers and visitors to downtown Columbus, the City and Capitol South are working together to build two new parking garages in the heart of the city, beginning in 2008.
“Creating a great downtown requires us to focus on everything from pedestrians to bikes, housing to shopping, transit to traffic, and find solutions that work,” said Mayor Michael B. Coleman. “Parking has long been the top concern of businesses thinking about moving downtown as well as the people already working in the area, and this plan will add more than 1,450 much needed spaces.”
The City and Capitol South commissioned a study in 2007 that noted additional parking is necessary in order for downtown to remain economically competitive. The City asked Capitol South to facilitate the design and construction of the two new parking facilities. Capitol South currently manages almost 6,000 parking spaces downtown, including the 4,600 spaces at the City Center garages and 1,200 spaces on the surface parking lots on the west side of the Scioto River.
“Our goal is to bring more residents, more workers, and more visitors into downtown,” said City Council President Michael C. Mentel. “I hope there is a growing realization that the economic success of downtown Columbus impacts the entire Central Ohio region. This understanding is important as we continue our efforts to bring people to the core of our city and parking must be a key priority in our comprehensive strategy for downtown redevelopment. An additional parking garage near the new Courthouse and RiverSouth District is an encouraging first step.”
Pending the approval of the Columbus City Council and the Downtown Commission, the City will begin demolition and site preparation in February for the first garage at the corner of Front and Rich streets, where the condemned, former Lazarus garage currently sits unused. This eight-level, 773-space public garage will serve the growing employee base in the RiverSouth area. Construction is set to begin in May 2008, with the garage set to open in May 2009. The $14.5 million investment includes the costs of demolition and construction. The Columbus Downtown Development Corporation currently owns the land and will donate it to City.
The City also plans to invest $15.267 million in building the second garage, a four-level, 682-space facility designed to serve the Fourth and Gay area. Due to an expanding residential neighborhood, current surface parking spaces are being eliminated. This garage is still in the initial stages of development, and several approvals are necessary prior to finalizing a construction timeline and advancing legislation.
“With all of the dynamic projects occurring downtown, we need to ensure that one of the core focuses of downtown – employment – remains a top priority. Providing access to adequate parking allows downtown to remain competitive, locally, regionally and nationally,” said Guy V. Worley, President & CEO of Capitol South. “With 80% of the downtown employees driving to work, parking remains a top priority for downtown’s revitalization.”
Phase one of road conversions, from one way to two way, is set to begin this summer. Estimated cost of this phase of conversions and the associated streetscapes, utility upgrades, resurfacing, new sidewalks and ADA-compliant ramps is $9.5 million.
- Front (Broad to Rich) – Brick turn lanes, street trees, rain garden, ornamental street lights ($6.3 million)
- Ludlow (Town to Rich) – street trees, ornamental lighting, rain garden ($1.5m)
- Wall (Town to Rich) – street will be all brick, shrubs, ornamental lighting ($1m)
- Rich (High to Ludlow) – ornamental lighting, some plantings ($750,000)
Other sections of these roads will be converted in succeeding years as other downtown projects move forward.
The City of Columbus is helping lead the implementation of the Downtown Business Plan with the Columbus Downtown Development Corporation and local businesses. 2007 marks the fifth year of the 10-year plan to bring new investment, energy and activity into downtown. There is a new market for downtown housing – with more than 4,700 housing units opened or opening soon, the opening of North Bank Park, AEP’s Foundation and the City’s commitment of $10 million each to the Scioto Mile Parks, and private partners looking at developing acres of surface parking lots into new housing and retail throughout the district. Since 2002, the Mayor also has worked with 35 companies, keeping 583 jobs in the district and getting commitments for 2,385 more jobs to be created. The total new investment in downtown since 2000 is estimated at $2.19 billion, with $711 million in public funding helping leverage $1.48 billion in private investment. This includes projects proposed, under construction, or built since 2000.
Bringing more people into downtown is a good goal, but bringing them in cars is completely misguided in my opinion. The only way people will get on transit is if parking is difficult or expensive. Building two new garages defeats both those options and devotes more valuable downtown real estate to the storage of private property that has negative externalities (e.g. congestion, pollution) that impact all of us. Do we want more cars on the freeways, on downtown streets, or taking up downtown land? I don’t.
I also have a gripe with the actual design of the garages. Why isn’t there retail on the ground floor? This creates boring street frontages that are uninteresting to pedestrians and turning traffic across sidewalks into a garage is actually hostile and dangerous to pedestrians.
In summary, I think this sucks.
Couldn’t have said it better myself John. This is weak.
I feel the need to clarify my position, mostly because my first comment was hastily written after being confronted with an ugly parking garage in the news first thing in the morning.
I’m not necessarily opposed to parking garages in downtown. It’s important to have SOME parking available, but what percentage of our central business district should be devoted to storing cars? Don’t we already have enough parking? I remember seeing a Google map on a blog recently with a downtown parking inventory (please post link if you know of it). I think parking downtown should be limited, expensive, and outside of the central core near Broad, High, or the River.
I know, I know…the parking is two blocks from your office and you want to park adjacent to your cubicle. Get real! Columbus is the nation’s 15th largest city (15, right?). Start acting like it. Mayor Coleman keeps saying we need more parking to attract businesses, but tell me why businesses continue to locate in places with limited and/or expensive parking like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Not only do they locate downtown, but imagine this…companies actually pay higher rent to locate in central business districts, despite the dreadful parking situation. The reason is obvious. Those cities have have transportation alternatives. Columbus businesses don’t seem to realize that alternatives exist or could be built. They ask for parking, but they should be asking for transit. There are better ways to spend $30 Million in Columbus.
I am asking now, what kind of city does Columbus want to be? Here is a list, albeit from 1990, of the percentage of commuters taking various modes of transportation to central business districts in 49 US cities:
http://www.publicpurpose.com/ut-uscbr.htm
Columbus, average city that we are, is in the middle of the list. Which was do we want to move? Do we want to be more like the cities at the top of the list (Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, even freaking Pittsburgh) or the cities at the bottom (Orlando, Fort Worth, San Jose, Phoenix)? I think the answer is obvious. Even Phoenix doesn’t want to be Phoenix. That’s why they’re building light rail.
Okay, I’m done ranting, almost.
Even if we all don’t agree about the need for parking, I think the majority of us could agree that this garage falls short of reasonable design standards. I really liked Walker’s and Columbusite’s ideas on what a better garage could look like:
http://walker.columbusunderground.com/?p=399
http://columbus-ite.com/2008/01/16/71/
I also want to throw out the idea of including bike parking, or even a full bike station with showers, bike rentals, maintenance service, etc… This hideous piece of infrastructure will be located really close to the Scioto Mile, which will link up with the Olentangy River Trail (the most heavily used trail in the state!).
Agree with y’all. John don’t back down, you are totally right.
THIS is a piss poor design. Thanks for linking to Columbusite and Walker’s postings about this, I especially liked the 3 photos Walker found. Anyways, here is the talk on Columbus Underground about it- I’m linking to the page with the surface parking inventory map. http://www.columbusunderground.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=11670&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30
Here original thoughts from the CU thread, slightly edited….
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Those renderings are well-done, but this proposal shows zero kind of imagination or even real thought with what to do with the space.
If anyone has been to the Tuttle Garage at OSU, that is better done than this proposal. There is ground floor retail on 2 sides. Here is a link to a photo of it: http://www.dgcolumbus.com/projects/education/higher/OSU_garage
And +1 to the people pointing out the lack of bike and motorcycle parking. Why not dedicate a chunk of this garage, say one car width on one side to bicycles, with lockers!!
All of this has been done before, even here in Columbus. They want downtown to be vibrant, to have people walking around, nothing attracts people to walk around a blank building. *sigh*
I guess the good news is that we have enough time to convince them to improve it… as opposed to seeing the rendering on the sign as they are constructing it.
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So assuming we can change this, who do we talk to? Once construction starts I’m afraid it will be a lost cause.
How about bringing it up at the Mayor’s 2012, super fun, giant, techno-charette summit:
http://www.columbus.gov/columbus2012/
I only wish I could make it there.
How does this parking garage scheme square with the Mayor’s desire for a downtown streetcar? And why, if downtown is awash in surface parking at relatively cheap rates, are these new garages “vitally needed?”
The ONLY way I would support these garages would be:
a) If there was a move to do away with most, if not all, of the surface parking in downtown.
b) If the buildings have ground-floor retail, as proposed above.
c) Revenues go to building more trolleys or other transit.
Questions:
a) Where will the funding for these garages come from? I hope it won’t be CM/AQ or other funding meant to address congestion or air quality issues. If this is the case, I will work to oppose this.
b) Isn’t the City Center garage underutilized since the mall closed? And what is the occupancy rate for the surface lots downtown? It seems to me we already have an overabundance of parking…too much parking…that makes the auto the default mode of transportation where transit should be the strongest and preferred choice.
It seems to me we are working at cross-purposes here.
Thanks, Calle13 for the link to that aerial shot showing the surface parking. As I was looking at that, I noticed there are quite a few parking garages in addition to the surface lot. It would have been great if the shot showed that too. Then maybe we’d see how the entire area is really just a huge parking area and that any buildings are nuisances that just get in the way of the cars and should be demolished forthwith.
I feel like if parking were truly needed, the private sector would build it and profit from it, without the city having to chip in roughly $15 Million per garage.
I was making some rough estimates of the cost per vehicle of this garage. I assumed the service life of the garage would be 50 years, the garage would be 100% occupied on work days (with no turnover), and 50% occupied on all other days. With those assumptions, the city would spend $1.22 per vehicle for the next 50 years in River South and $1.46 per vehicle in the Discovery District. Not quite as much as buying everyone a bus pass (at current prices), but close.
Garage on hold, but not for the right reasons:
http://dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/01/28/council.html
I should have looked at the zoning code ages ago. The garages do not meet the requirements of the zoning code. I just posted it here on RetroMetro:
http://columbusretrometro.typepad.com/columbus_retrometro/2008/01/parking-garage.html
As far as design issues go, I received word from folks at City Council that no one showed up to object to the design elements, which they were disappointed about as people have obviously been willing to toss in their two cents online.
We need to get more activists to go speak to Council about these issues if we actually want to make a difference.
That’s disappointing to hear Walker. I’ll keep that in mind for the future, but it’s not often that I can be in council chambers before 5:00 on Monday and sit there for two hours. They need a way to submit comments online. I’m not sure if emailing their aides is effective at all.
It sounds like: 1) they are afraid to point out the crappiness of this garage, and 2) things they read online from dozens of people have no meaning, while someone to standing up to talk for 22 seconds in front of them carries the weight of the world.
Councilwoman O’Shaughnessy just had a meeting about Complete Streets. Those principles would appear to be at complete odds with a single-use parking garage.
I e-mailed the Mayor about the zoning discrepancy and my concern regarding the poor design the day before Council approved it. I guess I should have included council on my e-mail too. Considering that I don’t live in Columbus though, I’m not sure anyone cares about my opinion on the issue.
Are there shovels in the ground? It’s not like it’s too late to change it.
Thank you for that info Walker. Even before “the internet” took off, my guess is that Council requires people to show up in person, vs. calling or writing a letter. Why do this? You know the answer as well as I do. Basically it means most people can’t go, because like Eric we can’t go and sit around when we have other stuff (work, childcare, school, getting home) going on.
If they are serious about hearing from the public, then of course online comments could be submitted and would be considered. Heck, we could put together a 2 minute PPT or video about why the garages stink.
While I am glad that Council was “disappointed” as opposed to “relieved” that people didn’t show up about the design, why can’t they point out the crapiness themselves, as Eric so eloquently states?
And John, while technically no one may care about your opinion, aren’t you one of these “young professionals” that was raised in Columbus but then left? Aren’t you the perfect candidate for returning to Columbus? In fact aren’t you open to returning, given the right conditions? Not that if they had done the garages right, that you would have packed your bags and left Chicago, but still.
So there’s two parts - short term (dealing with the system as it is) - Walker is absolutely right, we need bodies at the meeting, people speaking out. Long term we need to change the system so that other forms of participation are valid, allowed, and encouraged.
Just for clarification, council meetings start at 5pm, not before 5pm.
And I believe they need people to voice their opinions at these meetings so that their arguments are “on the record” so to speak. I don’t think anyone is discounting online discussions or blogging, but there are procedures to be followed when it comes to all levels of government.
If one person can’t go, we need to find someone else who can.
Minor correction…You do need to be there before 5pm to fill out a speaker slip and submit it before things get started.
http://www.columbuscitycouncil.org/how_do_i/speak.asp
I think calle’s last paragraph summed it up best.
Let’s all make a concerted effort to publicize important agenda items at upcoming council meetings.