525 more downtown spaces to park

City officials said they are on track for Thursday’s scheduled opening of a parking garage expansion, raising the city’s share of offstreet parking in the downtown area to 21 percent.

Officials said the expansion adds 525 spaces to the garage south of the City Administration Building, 30 S. Nevada Ave, bringing the number of city-owned garage spaces downtown to 2,579.

The facility may be the last one the city builds for a while. The city’s parking enterprise doesn’t own vacant land in the downtown area suitable for an additional garage, said parking administrator Greg Warnke, and the downtown area may not need additional parking.

That would depend, he said, “on what happens in downtown Colorado Springs and what the council wants to do to meet that need.”

Warnke said the city isn’t responsible for providing adequate parking, but rather supplements parking for downtown visitors as an economic development tool.

The idea is to provide off-street parking for downtown employees to free up metered parking for use by shoppers and visitors.

The city exempts certain projects from zoning codes that require a specified number of parking spaces, because some small businesses would find it impossible to comply. Theoretically, the city’s garages provide those spaces.

“By supplying a small amount of public parking, if that brings additional development, I think it’s a good economic tool,” Warnke said, “especially when it doesn’t cost the taxpayer anything.”

The parking system is selfsupporting through meter money and garage charges.

A study done in 1997 and updated in 2005 showed the city needed to add 473 long-term spaces and 39 hourly spaces to meet demand. That need is satisfied with the latest garage expansion.

If downtown development requires more parking, the city may look to the developer, Warnke said.

For example, a developer owns the lot on the northeast corner of Pikes Peak and Nevada avenues.

“They have a high-rise building planned there,” Warnke said. “The building itself would fall within the downtown parking exempt zone. However, I don’t think they would build a building like that without parking. They wouldn’t rely on what the city has available.”

The city also owns garages on the southwest corner of Kiowa Street and Nevada and on the northeast corner of Bijou Street and Cascade Avenue.

Downtown garages owned by others include the Palmer Center with 1,500 spaces, Pikes Peak Center with roughly 400 spaces, and El Paso County’s two parking garages on Tejon Street, with a combined total of 557.

Surface lots are scattered throughout downtown.

The parking enterprise, which is self-supporting through parking meter money and garage charges, now will focus on streetscapes. Next year, Nevada from Colorado Avenue to Boulder Street will get curbs and gutters, sidewalks and streetlights to match a Tejon Street project.

Future projects include streetscape work on Cascade from Colorado to Boulder and Colorado between Cascade and Nevada.

CITY PARKING GARAGE DETAILS

Mayor Lionel Rivera is scheduled to speak at a ribbon-cutting for the garage at 11:30 a.m. Thursday on the northeast corner of the garage, 130 S. Nevada Ave.

Parking enterprise history and facts:

- It was created in the mid-1970s to build the four-story Kiowa Street garage, which opened in 1976. Two stories were added in 1997. Total spaces: 650.

- The City Administration Building garage, with three floors, was opened in 1984. The second phase added three floors and opened in 1987-88. Total spaces: 1,099. Thursday’s opening adds 525 spaces for a total of 1,624 spaces. The design allows about 11 spaces to be converted to retail office space if demand arises.

- The Cascade/Bijou garage opened in 2001. Total spaces: 305. The design could support three additional floors, which would add 300 spaces.

- The city parking system also operates two surface lots that include 42 spaces at 2613 W. Cucharras St. and 40 spaces at 117 N. Nevada Ave. The system also operates 2,415 on-street parking meter spaces downtown and in Old Colorado City.

Parking costs:

Rates for the garages are 75 cents per hour ($6.50 daily maximum), $1 after 5 p.m. or $60 per month ($50 per month for group rates).

That’s cheaper than some comparable cities. Rates in Denver range from $90 to $200 per space, in Fresno, Calif., $35 to $85, and in Jacksonville, Fla., $57 to $77.

Among the city’s three garages, 2,208 people have monthly parking passes.

The city is a big user of its own system. For the City Administration Building garage alone, 305 parking spaces are rented by Colorado Springs Utilities and its employees at the discount group rate. Of those, 264 are employees who pay $30 each while Utilities pays the balance of $20 each.

Another 365 spaces are rented by other city departments and workers, also at the $50 discount rate. Of those spaces, 248 are under contract to employees, who enjoy the same cost-sharing arrangement with the city as do Utilities workers.

Ninety-three spaces are made available at no charge for city vehicles parked in the garage overnight. Those include spaces used by city officials, such as council members, who park there while attending night meetings at the City Administration Building.

COLORADO SPRINGS PARKING SYSTEM