KCRag Forum

I'm all for adding more signs if that works. But I was a suburbanite for years and I didn't need signs to tell me where to park.

If they help, great! But I have heard no complaints from suburbanites I know about downtown parking.

AllThingsKC wrote:I'm all for adding more signs if that works. But I was a suburbanite for years and I didn't need signs to tell me where to park.

If they help, great! But I have heard no complaints from suburbanites I know about downtown parking.

I've not heard complaints but I've certainly read them. Most of the complaints are from people unaware of the wealth of parking available and are looking instead for the non-existent parking equivalent to low hanging fruit. I also suspect many complain simply because parking is rarely free. I spent a lot of time downtown and still do when I'm in townand I never had an issue with parking because I pretty much know where to park now and expect to pay. I can understand why it my be a little problematic to suburbanites accustomed to parking immediately next to their destination with absolutely no ambiguity about getting towed or ticketed.

I really enjoyed the German practice of putting signs on the outskirts of town with all the parking garages and how many free spaces they had and then displaying well marked routes to each garage once in the city. That would be helpful in any US city. Much to my surprise there is help out there - here's a website I found

https://en.parkopedia.com/parking/downt ... 1802190300

that list doesn't look complete - isn't there public parking beneath Barney Allis Plaza?

Highlander wrote:
here's a website I found

https://en.parkopedia.com/parking/downt ... 1802190300

that list doesn't look complete - isn't there public parking beneath Barney Allis Plaza?

Yes. The Kauffman Center garage is huge and isn’t marked either

Real estate study: Downtown offers plenty of parking

...
The full-service commercial real estate company looked at seven parking garages in Downtown over three days, each at a different time of day. Those lots were selected because of their distance from 12th and Main streets, which according to AREA is the busiest pedestrian intersection in Downtown.

Accounting for reserved spaces, the seven lots studied had an average of 2,144 empty public spaces each day.

“As we work with developers, we believe the future will need less parking,” AREA Vice President Sean Craven said in a release. “We need to be able to easily convert parking garages to new uses, but we still need to be able to accommodate what employers need today.”

More than 3.5 million square feet of downtown office space has been converted into hotels and apartments, according to AREA, meaning garages that once had to accommodate more daytime traffic are splitting density between daytime needs like offices and nighttime needs like multifamily or hotel parking.
...

https://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/ ... tiful.html

“As we work with developers, we believe the future will need less parking,” AREA Vice President Sean Craven said in a release. “We need to be able to easily convert parking garages to new uses, but we still need to be able to accommodate what employers need today.”

Bold statement for KC.

We just subsidized another parking pedestal at 13th & Wyandotte (not previously authorized by Council). We're about to reconstruct Barney Allis Plaza -- as a garage -- for $65 million. The latest residential "high rise" on the streetcar route has a subsidized two-story parking pedestal.

Bold statements are fine, but there's little reason to believe it will result in action. Where's that audit?

KC has more available parking than any major or even small city in the country. You can go downtown any time of the day and park within a block of where you are going in a cheap garage that is half full or even easily on the street with some of the cheapest short term street parking anywhere. Same with Crown Center, Midtown, Plaza etc.

And people there still complain about how bad parking is in urban KCMO. Never going to change.

DaveKCMO wrote: ↑Wed Jan 30, 2019 10:15 am We just subsidized another parking pedestal at 13th & Wyandotte (not previously authorized by Council). We're about to reconstruct Barney Allis Plaza -- as a garage -- for $65 million. The latest residential "high rise" on the streetcar route has a subsidized two-story parking pedestal.

Bold statements are fine, but there's little reason to believe it will result in action. Where's that audit?

To be fair, the 13th & Wyandotte development has maybe half the amount of parking it would have if built in the suburbs, and most other downtown projects are skimping on parking as well. Utilization of the garages should naturally increase as surface parking lots keep getting replaced. I think the city is on the right track with downtown parking right now -- although parking minimums need to be removed in the remaining parts of the Crossroads. I worry that going overboard on limiting parking construction in new projects will create a situation where surface parking lots increase in value, making it more economical to instead tear down existing buildings to create project sites (something which is already happening to some degree - eg, the 20th & Broadway project will tear down 2/3 of the buildings on its block while leaving 2/3 of the surface parking).

Downtown was dead for so long, I think most of the complaints about parking is that people don’t know where it is. Someone from Lee’s Summit comes down to The Plaza every year and they know they always park in the same spot. That person might never have gone to the Sprint Center before or a First fridays or dinner at the many new restaurants. They are likely complaining about no parking to their wives club, drinking margs at the pool when there was an empty space half a block away they didn’t know was waiting for them.

beautyfromashes wrote: ↑Wed Jan 30, 2019 4:30 pm Downtown was dead for so long, I think most of the complaints about parking is that people don’t know where it is. Someone from Lee’s Summit comes down to The Plaza every year and they know they always park in the same spot. That person might never have gone to the Sprint Center before or a First fridays or dinner at the many new restaurants. They are likely complaining about no parking to their wives club, drinking margs at the pool when there was an empty space half a block away they didn’t know was waiting for them.

This is still a valid problem that needs fixed. Too many garages are closed off or not clear if public can park there.

The weekday is still -- and probably always will be -- the peak of parking demand downtown and in the Crossroads (aside from First Friday, which we rarely receive parking complaints because people KNOW to plan ahead). The people who create this weekday peak demand know exactly where to park -- either they don't want to pay or it's too far to waddle.

Also nowhere to water goats in the Crossroads since The Star fountain is gone.

Btw. where should the fountain that used to be in front of the Star be re-located? It's in the City's possession.