Exactly!

I just went back and re-read the Chronicle coverage of the Council debate from the mid-February meeting where the underground structure was voted on: link to Chronicle article

There were some questions from Councilmember Briere about new parking spaces being added and about the age of other parking structures in the system, but other than that, just about all of the arguments for the structure were based on the perceived need for ADDITIONAL spaces, not replacement of existing ones.

Note also Tom Crawford’s response to Briere’s questions about the DDA’s ability to pay off the bonds and how they would have to increase rates across the board just to make the payments on the bonds.

Just sayin’…

Until the DDA, Council and downtown merchants do a real honest-to-goodness objective study of their customer base, and how it is shaped/impacted by parking, we ought to stop spending $50 million at a pop for garages. We have people who own retail demanding that we all pony up millions for their “customers” to park. In Ann Arbor the math is always the same: more parking=more customers and a “vibrant” downtown. This gobblegook is being crammed down the throats of the taxpayers.

Read the DDA minutes posted in late-2008, and you’ll read Roger Hewitt report to the DDA board that parking revenues are FLAT and that demand is about what it was last year. Then, he marches right over to City Council to testify in favor of the library lot garage based on (yes) INCREASED demand for parking.

A second way to get a handle on parking needs would be to force Council and the DDA to post information on how many of the spots in our publicly-owned parking garages have been given over to developers, or businesses such as Google. Google got all their spots, for instance, but still hasn’t created the number of jobs promised when the spots were so graciously handed over. An unappealing number of the $55,000 per spots in the new library lot will be handed over to that developer, as well.

U of M built the new Arthur Miller theater on top of a large parking lot in North campus, and was then poised to build two 600-car garages in a quiet city neighborhood near the hospital. If our downtown lots are filled with the cars of U of M commuters and students, and retail shoppers (as if) are really being inconvenienced to the point they won’t shop downtown, how’s about our city push U of M to build student parking on the 600 acres of bucolic manicured grounds they own on North Campus? Could that free up, say, 25 percent of the spots in our garages? More?

Perhaps the Ann Arbor tax receipts are doing well enough that supporting the merchant community can be a tertiary concern. I’m just not used to that condition. I’ll have to look at the budget reports.

Politically, yes. Legally, not so much. (Obligatory disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer.)

A reduction in existing spaces actually would do nothing to change the city’s responsibility per the Michigan Environmental Protection Act to consider alternatives to the proposal to build the underground parking structure. It also wouldn’t change the fact that the city still hasn’t done a parking demand analysis.

In terms of simply being truthful about their intentions, city council could identify the additional 547 or so existing spaces that they anticipate being replaced by the new structure. If the structure truly were intended to be replacement parking, its size would have been tied to the number of spaces expected to be removed from the system at other sites. The reality is that the decisions about the size of the structure didn’t include such considerations, neither by the DDA board nor city council.

Politics aside, I still believe that parking demand will soon begin to decrease (if it hasn’t already) and that we may be able to lose the spaces at First and William (and more in the future) and still not need to add additional spaces, partly by better managing the remaining ones. The onus is on the city to demonstrate otherwise.

Carsten Hohnke was once on record in support of a relatively benign resolution of the 415 W. Washington question, and he has a number of constituents with strong feelings about that property. His support of a First & William park might be a first move to facilitate a change in position.

I have no information to support this idea, just a habit of seeing some of the programmatic effects of decisions.

Fine analysis of a complex issue…done over a holiday weekend at that. Thank you.