City wants to get a big-picture assessment of downtown parking

LACONIA — With questions about what to do with the downtown parking garage gaining more attention, the city has decided to simultaneously take a comprehensive look at parking throughout the city‘s central business core.

“With greater numbers of people coming into the downtown area it makes sense to look at how parking in the downtown is laid out and what is the highest and best use of the parking we have,” City Manager Scott Myers said of the move to have an urban planning firm perform an analysis.

The City Council on Monday authorized Myers to prepare a draft of the issues and concerns to be addressed in the study.

Myers said he and a number of city department heads will be meeting over the next couple of weeks to prepare a proposal for the scope of the study and hoped to be able to present that information to the council in early February. Once the council agrees to what the study will entail the city will then put out the project to bid. Once the contract is awarded Myers estimated it would take the consulting firm five or six months to complete the work and report its findings and recommendations back to the city — hopefully by fall.

While much of the study will deal with parking — number of spaces, locations, parking time limits — Myers said other issues to be looked at might include whether there is a need for public toilet facilities, the creation of pocket parks or other outdoor spaces where people could gather, on-street loading zones, and the placement of crosswalks and other pedestrian traffic features.

Among the questions that Myers hopes the study will answer are who comes downtown and how long they stay. He said entertainment venues such as the Colonial Theatre and The Cake will bring more traffic into the downtown area.

The ongoing study on rehabilitating the downtown parking garage is continuing in the meantime. A list of suggested improvements to the facility is due to be presented the council’s Land and Buildings Committee later this month, with the second of three public information meetings due to take place in February.

Meanwhile, the city has been compiling suggestions about the parking garage project which have been submitted to a page on the city’s website. So far seven responders have said they would prefer a parking garage be built in another location, with three suggesting that part or all of the existing parking structure be converted into commercial space or apartments. Others have proposed installing solar panels on the top deck of the garage.

Myers said all these ideas will be taken into consideration.

Operators of downtown businesses have been saying that having short-term parking spaces close to Main Street is critical to attracting customers, and that long-term parking should be situated further away. Last year the city acquired the parking lot behind St. Joseph Church, adding 85 spaces. But Myers and several city councilors acknowledged Monday that the lot is currently being underutilized and wondered what could be done to encourage more people who park downtown all day to use that lot.

Myers believes the overall study is a wise investment.

“If we’re going to be investing millions of dollars (on parking), I think it just makes sense to have a different set of eyes come in and look at where we should be putting things,” he said. “It will help us better spend our dollars in the future.”

Public input needs to be part of the study process, said City Councilor Bruce Cheney,

“This is an opportunity to say we gave everybody a chance to be part of this,” he said.