Columbus wants two new garages downtown

From NBC4i:

Mayor Michael Coleman announced Friday that Columbus and Capitol South plan will add some 1,400 spaces and two new parking garages downtown.

Capitol South is a non-profit development organization that leads city-changing projects.

Coleman, along with Council Member Maryellen O’Shaughnessy, said they will advance the plan to Columbus City Council on July 23….

The legislation would approve $600,000 for Capitol South to facilitate the design of two parking garages in the Fourth and Gay area and the RiverSouth district. The announcement came with Columbus’ plan to address the changing dynamics of downtown.

Note that that half mil is just for the design. Should the city be in the garage building business? Wouldn’t a private developer be better- for taxpayers at least? Or maybe downtown parking has to be subsidized to make it affordable.

“Several exciting projects have begun to take shape recently. This is great news for downtown, but we need to be aware that construction will reduce the availability of surface parking, especially in our dense employment corridors,” said Guy V. Worley, CEO of Capitol South and Chair of the Downtown Parking Work Group.

Guy Worley used to be Mayor Coleman’s chief of staff, and was “recently appointed as Chief Executive Officer of Columbus Downtown Development Corporation (CDDC) and Capitol South Community Urban Redevelopment Corporation,” according to his bio (pdf).

Here’s more on the subsidy issue from Columbus developer Frank Kass, a member of the Downtown Parking Work Group, from Business First back in March:

“We need to address specific parking needs where employment and the accessibility and cost of parking are out of whack,” he said.

City involvement could cut the cost of parking for employers in half, Kass said, and he expects downtown landlords to contribute land for any areas needing parking.

“You can pay for (the garages) in part by what it does for downtown employment, because everybody working in the city pays a 2 percent income tax,” he said.

Trackback | Posted by Brian | Jul 20, 2007 11:53 am | Permalink | Bookmark
Categories: Downtown, Columbus, Politics, News

Posted by Columbus Corruption: Mayor Mike Coleman Will Waste $600,000 on Garage that his Former Chief of Staff will Profit From « Right Angle Blog | Jul 20, 2007 2:03 pm

[…] And as the always-interesting Columbuser blog notes, Guy Worley is alittle too close to Mayor Colema… Guy Worley used to be Mayor Coleman’s chief of staff, and was “recently appointed as Chief Executive Officer of Columbus Downtown Development Corporation (CDDC) and Capitol South Community Urban Redevelopment Corporation,” according to his bio (pdf). […]

Posted by blueboy | Jul 21, 2007 7:38 pm

Just what the city without transit needs, more parking garages! Columbus may be the largest city in the developed world without passenger train service of any kind (intercity, subway, light rail, has deplorable bus service)and already has the largest percentage of parking garages per square foot of any American city. Other cities are starting to see how keeping cars out of downtown spurs growth and development; Columbus, stuck in 60’s think, wants to bring more cars downtown. Stop the madness!

Posted by Columbuser.com » Downtown garage round-up | Jul 23, 2007 12:31 pm

[…] Friday the city announced plans to build two garages downtown Here’s the story in the Dispatch. The garages will be financed with lower-interest city […]

Posted by Walker Evans | Jul 23, 2007 6:06 pm

I think that parking is only a big problem in the Short North area as of today. There’s few surface lots, few garages, and few public parking spots. And we’re not going to have any sort of solution available in that area for another year when the Urban Oasis public garage goes in adding a whopping 250 spots. We needed an extra 250 spots in the Short North 3 years ago. Who knows what we’ll need next year when we finally get these.

As for downtown, I agree with a lot of people who are saying that parking isn’t a huge problem today. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be prepared for change. The new Edwards project is going to take up 9 city blocks, almost all of which are currently parking lots. According to that Dispatch article I posted earlier, 1,500 parking spots are going away downtown in the next year and a half. These parking garages being planned aren’t going to help us with parking, they’re going to give us 1,400 spots back, barely even maintaining the status quo.

If we don’t do SOMETHING ahead of time, we’re likely to have a similar parking problem with what the Short North is facing today. And I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d rather fix a problem ahead of time with proper planning instead of waiting until the problem turns into an emergency before we even start to think about doing something about it.

I really see this as a great display of the whole “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” public outcry problem the city faces. People will scream at the city for allowing the parking problem in the Short North to get so bad and not doing anything about it until now, and then turn around and scream at the city for trying to build parking garages downtown ahead of the curve when a lot of parking spaces are in the process of disappearing.

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