Downtown Parking Recent History

I rewatched some past City Council meetings about the downtown parking garage issue because I didn't really pay attention at the time. Based on the 6/7/16 City Council meeting, I learned about how this current parking garage location was picked.

On 4/28/16, the Downtown Parking Committee looked at the best places for downtown parking garages in the long-term. From the video explanation presented by city staff, it looks like Committee members were put into 3 groups and asked to give their opinions on the best places to put parking garages in the future.

The 3 group recommendations that overlapped with each other the most were the water tower site (that all three groups liked), the municipal site (with 2 groups liking), and the NW corner of Chestnut and Virginia (with 2 likes). Even though the goal of the community involvement was to look for long-term parking solutions, two groups said the future city hall should be located on the east side of Hwy 5 (which is why there are two stars all the way over to the right even though that area was not picked for a garage location). The dark blue circle is the potential garage location, the yellow highlighted area is Herndon Street, and the light blue circled area is Thomason Tire.

Downtown Parking Committee picked desired locations

At the 6/7/16 City Council meeting, all of this was presented along with staff recommendations for parking which is the red overlay areas. The city joined the water tower site with the municipal site and they joined the NW corner of Chestnut and Virginia with the potential site for the future city hall. This looks like how the Herndon/Thomason Tire area got added to the staff recommendations.

Evidently, it was some time after this meeting that the private developer came to the city with a proposed location (the dark blue circle is the potential garage location, the yellow highlighted area is Herndon Street, and the light blue circled area is Thomason Tire). For a better map, see the PowerPoint presentation from 6/7.
The next City Council meeting about a parking garage was 11/15/16 when the development agreement was presented.