David Stamps: Comments about parking garage changes

To The Daily Sun,

Laconians have always hated using the parking garage. Little proposed addresses that fundamental problem.

The second floor is not designed to make parking easy; with vertical steel supports, it's like driving into a jungle gym. The internal parking and turning radii are terrible for most automobiles. This alone will ensure that Laconia will continue to hate parking there.

Without public bathrooms, the internal stairways will continue to function as a public urinal.

It is all very well to say there will be better lighting and security but within two years, the cameras will not be working or removed because police don’t have the staff to monitor. Without cameras there won't be a feeling of safety nor of the possibility of review of any issue. The lights will likely not be maintained. At the least there should be two public safety kiosks with visible blue light and one-button automatic dialing such as most college campuses have.

On the third floor, without lights and cameras and 24 hour monitoring it will continue to be a hangout for the young, the homeless and drug users.

The garage is in the wrong place. It acts as a barrier not an invitation. The ramp entrance is dangerous for pedestrians with no sidewalk on the west side of Beacon Street East. Visually it confuses motorists who are immediately faced with a narrow alley masquerading a main street or a sharp S-turn to the right or left. Street parking on Beacon Street has helped calm traffic but overall the structure reveals nothing of the skyline when approached from the south. It looks good from a pedestrian standpoint but motorists have no time appreciate the lovely work done by parks and recreation.

Signage will not solve the problem of the abruptness of the onramp. Wide-open Rotary Park draws the eye away from the onramp which also contributes to pedestrian safety issues.

It seems Laconia is not being given a fair shake. Instead of building a sunken parking lot in the middle of the City Hall lot with open, prestressed concrete floors and ceilings we are only being offered lipstick on a sow. There were several public hearings in 2005 but they were ignored. This is the real can getting kicked down the road. Laconia has done no real planning as to downtown circulation and parking since the Big Air ideas were introduced by professional urban planners for Laconia Main Street.

Consider taking the top floor off the existing garage and replacing the second floor ceiling with a roof that doesn’t require all the interior steel supports. Laconia might hate the garage a little less.

Aside from the middle of the holiday season, people may have skipped the public hearing because they didn’t like ideas forced on them by City Council. Why doesn’t the public get to review suggestions before finalizing the design? I never found the plans ahead of the hearing, there should have been an obvious homepage link. Bottom line, parking and circulation should be a downtown-wide master plan-level discussion given the enormity of all recent changes.

David Stamps

Laconia