Jessica Fisher, Public Information Assistant, 509.625.6749
Thursday, August 16, 2018 at 2:15 p.m.
We are half way through the downtown parking study and would like to share Nelson/Nygaard’s progress to date!
After months of gathering data and receiving input Nelson/Nygaard has submitted their key findings. Their team scoured downtown Spokane counting all of the parking spaces and there are 36,819 spaces total. 5,378 of these parking spaces are on-street and the remaining 31,441 parking spaces are in off-street lots and garages.
Nelson/Nygaard also observed parking demands at various times throughout the day. They concluded that the city has a large number of available spaces, but parking can still be hard to find in key locations. These locations included the downtown core, the Hospital District, Kendall Yards area, near the courthouse and the freeway viaduct. During peak hours, about 40% of the city’s overall parking spaces are not being used.
In May, nearly 1,900 parking users participated in the parking survey. The majority of these people come downtown for work followed by those that come to shop. The top three issues with downtown parking according to the survey were: off-street parking being too expensive, not enough available parking space at all times and location, and on-street time limits being too short.
We are now entering phase two of the study, the second phase is all about strategy development. Nelson/Nygaard will be focusing on creating strategies for seven categories of improvement:
For the next three months they will be developing strategies that coincide with the categories of improvement. You can continue to monitor the progress of the parking study by visiting our website!
