The City of Idaho Falls has the answer, they just need to find the money. A six story, maybe more, maybe less, parking garage should be built.
There is plenty of room at the current downtown parking lot to get this done. If my memory serves me correctly, it is in the center of downtown and would be the best location. If the city bonded or borrowed they could pay off the construction costs early. The thing to do would be to sell monthly parking permits to those who work downtown at five to ten, or twenty dollars a month. With even 500 people buying parking at $20 per month, they could bring in $10,000 a month and pay off the loan extremely early. After the loan or bond is paid, they could drop the price and all the revenue is just money in the bank.
Imagine having all that parking on the street be open to tourists and residents. I believe that this may be one of the missing links to help with the revitalization of the downtown area.
I am not sure of the exact figure of people employed downtown, yet I know it is significant, and to have a covered, secure place to park your investment would make $20, $30 each month well worth it. It is like car insurance that makes sense.
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Gato got runned over by Marcus many moons ago. Be ye daft, 2486? 
Let's have a new poll, alright, Joe?
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I’d want to check your numbers pretty carefully.
Several years ago I was involved in some construction estimates in another area of the country and the cost of a high-rise parking garage was on the order of $10K-$15K a stall. The land that the parking lot occupies right now (Capital and B) has approximately 60 spaces laid out. Assuming approximately the same density, you’d need at least a 9 story structure to get 500 cars. That would make it the tallest structure downtown by more than double, at least until the Marriott is built (which will have underground parking, IIRC).
At 5% interest and $30/month per stall, a continuously and completely subscribed structure of 500 stalls would take a minimum of 30 years to pay off. I would guess that banks/agencies would probably not be comfortable with anything more than a 60% occupancy assumption in order to decide that the project is viable. That extends the payback to more than 50 years. There’s a lot of factors that could be used, of course – escalating the cost of a subscription over time would significantly reduce the payback period.
Obviously those calculations could change dramatically if any of my assumptions were changed or found to be incorrect. It’s a very attractive idea that’s been proposed a number of times, always torpedoed by the sheer investment cost.
I apologize, this was just an idea that I came up with. Seeing how the downtown area needs the parking, it would be a wise investment no matter the size. After reading what I would assume would be someone that knows what they are talking about, now we can try to figure out the best idea. Sometimes it takes money to make money, something the city has always shyed away from. There has to be a way to free up the streets so that parking can be avaliable to customers. I know I’d spend more time downtown if I could find a reasonable spot close to where I was doing my business. I dread having to go down to the DMV or the courthouse. I usually have to make a few rounds around the block to find a place to park. My question to you, in your honest opinion, what would be the best case scenario for the parking problem, because it is after all a problem?
I disagree. I’m downtown all the time, and parking is rarely a problem. There is a parking lot available for a decent price on A street, and it’s never full. There is also parking available by the RR tracks available to downtownees.
Granted, most of the time when I got downtown, I’m on bike … but maybe that’s a better solution than dropping 15 grand on a cement eyesore. Stop driving, use your feet.
Parking garages sound like a great compact and vertical solution, unfortunately I learned in an urban theory course they are unimagineably expensive. Boise only has 1 parking garage in their downtown, and Spokane’s bankrupted the developer (as I recall).
I’ve always been able to find parking, but I don’t mind walking a few blocks thru my favorite downtown. I’m also not a downtown business owner, though, and I hear them complain the lack of parking keeps people out.
With all the development planned in that area, a parking solution is needed, and it’ll likely have to be verticle. I don’t pretend to know how the economics of it will happen.
OK, so not too many are in favor of a big concrete mass in the center of downtown. I tend to agree now that that has been mentioned.
By the way, I have to drive close to ten miles to get downtown, so me walking is out of the question, I could ride a bike, but I won’t.
My situation is the same for the other 10-15 thousand people living in close proximity of my home. Without a (mass transit) system currently in use,(CART and the other bus line don’t even come close to Iona), driving is what we do.
How about this, if a new office building were to be constructed, or hotel, much like the Marriott, 2-3 levels of underground parking, would fill the void needed for now and most likely the needs in the near future. It would keep that ugly grey eyesore out of site, and we could add yet another beautiful addition to downtown. I’m just not sure where it would go.
One way to free up parking around the courthouse would be if the county and city would start forcing employees to park on Memorial. As is most don’t care. You also get a lot of police overspill as their parking lot isn’t big enough and they often have to move to the street. You wouldn’t believe how many county employees park on the street and in the court parking lot. They then go out once an hour or so and move their cars to another spot in the same area to avoid a parking ticket. If you think I’m kidding watch for a car thats always parked on Capital next to the courthouse with personalized plates that is a woman’s name and starts with M (leaving out the name so it can’t be said I specifically targetted her). That car is there every day and is always moving around all day and has been like that for years.
Underground parking seems like a better alternative to a verticle structure. There are already a few in the downtown area.
However, I still don’t need a parking crisis in the area. But then again, I attended ISU in Pokey, so I know parking troubles more than some
I’d also like to see a parking garage, in conjunction with turning most of the downtown into pedestrian/bike only. My dream structure would have rock climbing on the south side and a waterfall on the north that could be climbed in the winter. When I lived in Winterpark, they built one and then declared bankruptcy and got the structure for almost free
Not advocating that though.
I agree Kevin, I think Memorial Drive especially should be closed off and turned into expanded greenbelt rather than pavement.
Think of all the possibilities of a new park right in that prime spot!
However to do so we definitely would need a parking garage or some other super-solution.
I am a business owner in the dowtown area and so far, parking has not been that big of an issue. I, and my employees, will park either by the tracks or on Memorial Drive and walk a couple hundred yards.
Since the era of strip malls and suburb box stores, having to walk a couple hundred yards has become more of an issue. There is plenty of parking downtown and with the exception of an event at the Colonial, I always find convinient spots.
This month’s Business 2.0 magazine page 28 has an interesting multi-story parking solution.
Berlin-based CarLoft engineers car elevators in/on their buildings, which lift tenant cars to the living units. They’re building 11 of them in Germany at $10 million each!
No, I’m not suggesting it for Idaho Falls (can anyone re-engineer a grain elevator to do that?)
just bringing it up in this topic because it’s interesting and i thought i’d share
Riding my bike around Taylor Crossing the other day I noticed at least one building with a garage basement.
It would be nice if more office buildings around Idaho Falls included those in an effort to alleviate parking and space problems.
I agree tourist could find easier parking along the green belt if all the parking was done away with due to a new parking garage. Idaho falls needs the tourism. The Idaho falls Magazine is going to bring alot of tourism and buisnesses to our local area and its going to be out real soon. I hope there isnt a parking issue when they come flooding in here. Then all my pictures would have been decieving to them. Prospectus is coming out. And I really think the city should think about a parking garage or even a local buisness man should. It would be a good investment especialy for all the local evens downtown. He could make alot of money by charging for parking. There is the 4th of july and street fest. all kinds of events that could draw people to pay for good safe parking.
Kewl – have you been downtown recently? There are a handful of paid-for parking areas that are never full.
A major parking structure is a folly of an idea.
The parking by the river makes it hard to see oncoming traffic when turning and is a saftey hazzard. Maybee some kind of indoor off the st parking would be a good idea if its placed right. the court house has parking issues and so does the local events. the parking on street is also a hazzard it makes the st really hard to drive on hard to back out visibility issues all the way. I think it would be nice. But like Joe said too its good to walk around on your feet. But some visitors might miss some action and not want to walk around all day. I was late for court before becuase of parking and lost custody of my son. So I think it just might be nice.
Jeremy you have a great point there. I think the best thing that could be done here is to make downtown largely pedstrian. One good thoroughfare with access to the parking and let ‘em walk. Then decide if there is need for more parking. Our entire downtown is no more than 2 x 3 large city blocks, and people in those places frequently park several blocks from their destinations.
Maybe as the big Condos rise up on the W side of the river, there could be some parking added. It would at least help with those riverside events, although I’m sure it would be too far to walk into the town for most.
On a significantly more wild note, how cool would it be if people did enter our downtown through Sportsman’s, and it was the gate to the city?
Portland, OR lays claim to the most pedestrian area of any city in case anyone thinks ped areas mean decay. That is one thriving, healthy, growing, popilar destination of a City.
Archy – good point with the pedestrian area! I’ve seen many instances in towns smaller than ours where downtown areas were made ped-only and trived. I would love to see all the nasty cars out of the downtown area, but I won’t hold my breath. Wouldn’t it be nice to have all of the cars parked in city parking lots so we were free to roam the streets of downtown without noisey trucks zooming by?
Yes, indeed. Deliveries into downtown from x -x AM and PM to keep the restaurants and others supplied, then some peace and quiet.
A good walk around the local mall is more of an effort than going anywhere downtown.
What we need a parking garage for is the hundereds of site workers who fill up all of the parking lots around for their convenience in getting to the busses.
I just went downtown on this past Tuesday to watch a movie. It was about 4:00 in the afternoon and I had no problem parking. A week prior, I was in the downtown area at 11:00, still no problem. If you focus only on the courthouse and along Memorial Drive, yes, it’s crowded there. I also think that largely pedestrian is the way to go. Think of the Gateway in SLC. It’s basically a mall designed with an “open air” feel to it. It would be great downtown. Right now (in my own opinion) there are too many specialty shops that people are willing/eager to bypass and go to wal-mart instead. By the time you walk through the “Mall” or wal-mart to get what you want, you could have done the same walking downtown.
Since the topic of the garage itself seems moot at this point, I will throw out an idea that I may have to post elsewhere at some point. How about second or third or rooftop level walkways all around downtown? There are a couple of those in the abovementioned Gateway, and it would put businesses instead of emptiness into a lot of spaces. Downtown needs to centrealize and grow upward, not outward.
I’ve noticed large amounts of “Basalt” in the downtown areas during excavations…..this could hinder the underground parking idea is some areas of downtown.