Midtown parking study up for debate

COEUR d'ALENE — Armed with an $8,500 parking study, the Coeur d’Alene City Council will address parking in midtown at its next meeting.

A Nov. 5 community meeting is also scheduled at the city library downtown.

In the meantime, parking continues to clog residential neighborhoods.

Despite two free-parking lots at midtown paid for by ignite cda, the city’s urban renewal agency, motorists and often employees of midtown businesses have been parking in surrounding residential areas, neighbors say.

Signs paid for by businesses have popped up in neighborhoods alerting motorists to not block residential driveways.

“I’ve been in my house 27 years, and it’s ridiculous,” Yvonne Bright of east Reid Avenue said during a June parking meeting. “I have a driveway, but they just block it.”

The latest parking study — paid for by ignite cda, which is looking for ways to foster a vibrant midtown community — includes suggestions on how to ease parking pressure on residential streets.

The study calls for enforcement in lots, urges business owners to encourage their employees to not park in residential areas, and calls for law enforcement to ticket motorists who stay beyond the two-hour street parking limits or block driveways.

Council member Woody McEvers, who lives nearby on Second Street and owns a business in Hayden, said midtown business owners who do not have parking lots should encourage their employees to be courteous when it comes to parking. They should nudge patrons to use city lots, he suggested.

“The big part of this, businesses should take some responsibility for being a good neighbor,” McEvers said.

With a few exceptions, midtown has the same number of buildings and businesses it had 20 or 30 years ago, McEvers said, and parking has increased with the addition of two urban renewal lots accounting for 54 spaces.

Safeway, centrally located between Harrison and Foster avenues, has room for 143 vehicles and occupancy there ranges from 11 percent to 29 percent of capacity throughout an average day, according to the study. Capacity in the two urban renewal lots ranges from 7 to 63 percent during peak hours.

About 20 percent of the vehicles observed one day in June as part of the survey remained parked more than two hours.

Courtesy, McEvers said, is an aspect often lost in parking discussions.

“Parking is always a pain,” he said. “It comes down to people doing the right thing. It’s about being good neighbors.”

The City Council will meet on election day, Nov. 6. The public meeting to review and discuss the Midtown Parking Study is the day before that: Nov. 5 between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. at the Coeur d’Alene Public Library, Community Room.