Make downtown Denver parking great again
Denver City Council members recently voted to spend an estimated $150 million over the next 10 years to resolve the “affordable housing crisis.” Now that that problem has been at least partially addressed, the council should next tackle Denver’s “affordable parking crisis.”
The city’s downtown worker bees are increasingly suffering from sticker shock as the price of parking increases steadily and sometimes dramatically. Even well-paid employees are beginning to balk at the situation, given that two years of monthly downtown parking fees would pay for a really nice seven-day Caribbean cruise.
The current situation is a visible, painful demonstration of the law of supply and demand at work. More and more parking lots vanish, to be replaced by lofts built to fill the apparently insatiable demand of people eager to live right next to Speer Boulevard, a block away from the county jail, or across the street from a detox center.
Since parking lots are in short supply, then why not use parking meters? Good luck finding one. Prospective parkers are often confronted with entire city blocks of parking meters covered with red bags, meaning all parking, including loading and unloading, is prohibited. Even if an open meter can be located, a variety of restrictions ensure that it is really only available on alternate Tuesdays between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m. Defy those restrictions and your car will be towed.
An obvious question: why doesn’t everyone simply take public transportation or commute on bikes and skip all the parking hassles? Because those options simply aren’t feasible for the people who live nowhere near a bus stop, or whose schedules are incompatible with RTD’s service times. As for commuting by bicycle, that works well for some people, but it is just not possible to pick up children from day care and ferry them home on a two-wheeler.
Of course, parking problems are nearly as old as the car itself. Back in 1905, Paris attempted to solve its chronic parking shortage with the introduction of a parking garage equipped with an internal elevator which transported cars to upper stories where attendants parked the cars.
In America, in the early days of the automobile, stable owners used to charge people the same rate for parking a car as they did for stabling a horse. But by 1929, there were 23 million cars crowding downtown city streets, and horse stables were no longer a viable option. Lawyer and newspaper publisher Carl Magee came up with one solution: the parking meter, the first of which was installed in Oklahoma City in 1935. However, the city’s indignant citizenry vociferously opposed the device, considering it un-American to pay for parking. In spite of that opposition, parking meters spread across the country.
Next came concrete parking garages in the mid-1950s. These structures were considered superior to surface parking because more cars could occupy less space. But since they were built for function and not for style, people considered them eyesores. Builders often placed them underground, not just to conceal their ugliness but also to take advantage of federal funds by designating them as bomb shelters.
What might Denver do to “ease the squeeze” of parking fees? Council members could at least consider city-subsidized parking. Of course, no citizen wants to pay more in taxes, but a good case can be made that a series of strategically located, reasonably priced parking garages would benefit not just workers but everyone who ventures downtown, locals and tourists alike. And these garages needn’t be the kind of stark, utilitarian structures that photographers and filmmakers have used for years to portray the epitome of urban bleakness.
Denver could emulate other cities which have designed aesthetically pleasing, even beautiful parking structures. In Stuttgart, Germany, the Parkhaus Engelenschanze is more like a parking palace, with an allglass exterior and an inner courtyard with a waterfall and creek.
Closer to home, there’s the Kansas City Community Bookshelf, a façade which runs along the south wall of the central library’s parking garage. Built to resemble a row of books on a bookshelf, the “books” are 25 feet high and 9 feet wide. This striking facility is not only functional, it’s a big tourist attraction. Then there’s the “Texas Doughnut,” which takes an above-ground garage and wraps it with retail, commercial or residential buildings in a way that make it barely noticeable from the street.
Yes, it would be pricey, but if Denver taxpayers agreed to subsidize the construction of similar innovative, attractive structures, it would be a valuable addition to the many other great amenities this city has to offer. In fact, Denver might well become known as a city so hip and trendy, even our parking garages are cool. Teresa Keegan works for the courts in Denver. E-mail her at b161tak@yandex.com.