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Downtown Parking Strategy and Implementation Plan—Public Comments ATTAC I VY E®®� 3 4. Put a price on downtown parking. Given the competitive position of downtown merchants, competing with nearby downtowns with free parking, and suburban shopping centers, metered parking at this time would just undercut downtown's competitiveness. 5. Expanded use of parking in lieu fees. As with the parking garage,this strategy could be pursued in the longer term, but cannot solve the immediate problem. Before in lieu fees could work,the City would have to get ahead of the parking demand —this approach would not work while the City is playing catch up to parking saturation. But, once reasonable parking supply relative to parking demand is established, growth of downtown building space and vitality could provide at least 2/3 of the funding for increased parking demand,allowing the City to leverage its parking investments by a factor of three,or more. Public parking spaces are inherently more efficient,supporting more square footage of new development than private parking lots, because public spaces get used all day long, not just at the peak time of one private business. The Weinberger-Karlin Resnick Study states that"given different time of day peaking characteristics of different land uses, sharing parking allows mixed-use districts to provide the same effective parking supply using approximately 2/3 the number of stalls that would be programmed without sharing spaces"(1). Moreover,suburban parking standards, such as one parking space per 300 sq. ft.of building space, have not worked well in downtown settings. In order to build or expand building space, small lot sizes make the on-site parking configurations unworkable. So, in order to meet the suburban parking standards designed for single business peak periods,developers often have to buy the lot next door,and tear down buildings, creating gaps not conducive to downtown design and pedestrian shopping. There are numerous downtown properties(in addition to the Pastime Pool property)which would add building space but for the requirement to provide on-site parking. The primary benefit of expanded use of in lieu fees would be expanded vitality in the downtown. Greater intensity creates better proximity and a pedestrian environment. For example, with the Spring Street lot,those 42 parking spaces (at 300 sq. ft. per space) could allow 12,600 sq.ft. in increased building space, while reducing parking 6 Provided to Planning Commission for March 8,2017 Meeting and City Council for April 18,2017 Meeting 20