City officials presented their annual report of the Dickson Street area paid parking program to members of the Fayetteville City Council on Tuesday.
Smile, you’re on camera
The 14-month-old plan, which includes a system of kiosks, gated lots, on-street numbered parking spaces and residential parking boundaries, is responsible for a vastly different atmosphere in a roughly two-square-mile area around Dickson Street.
Now that we’ve had a full year to evaluate things, it appears as though the change hasn’t been nearly the business killer some predicted it to be.
Some businesses are gone (WOW Japanese Bistro, El Sancho, Sunrise Cafe) and some have relocated (Geno’s, Kosmos), but some have moved in (Farrell’s, Pitas, Rowdy Beaver, Chipotle, Waffle House) and some have even expanded their business (Feltner’s, Grub’s).
At the one-year mark, HMR tax numbers were up 6.1 percent in the Dickson Street area. Citywide, 2011 collections are currently up 4.82 percent on the year.
With the primary goal of the program being to finance a parking deck, and with design and bond discussions already underway, all we’re missing now are parking-specific statistics.
Here’s what we found out on Tuesday:
Since implementation, numerous changes have been made to the system including:
- The daily start time for paid parking was changed from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
- The maximum daily rate was reduced from $8 to $5
- The grace period for entering and exiting the gated lots for free was increased to 30 minutes
- A 90 percent discount for area employees was added
- A pay-by-phone service was added
- The number of permits allowed per household in residential areas was increased from 2 to 4
- 4 blocks of mixed use areas were added for residential parking
- Designated areas for trash bins were added in residential areas
- An event parking model was implemented in the main WAC lot during large shows at the Walton Arts Center
The changes, however, were anticipated, and according to city staff, were directly responsible for low revenue projections.
WAC lot entrance
According to Tuesday’s report, parking fees and revenue from citations (less sales tax) totaled $943,024. That’s nearly $40,000 more than was budgeted for the year.
With monthly payments already included in the budget, the city’s equipment purchase (about $810,000 worth) is on track to be paid back on schedule, in five years.
Also on target to be paid in full is the annual $289,000 Walton Arts Center is to receive for parking attendants and arts programming, a secondary goal of the paid parking plan.
A look at the stats alone would suggest paid parking has gone off without a hitch. That, of course, is not the case.
Kiosks have been spray painted, gate pins continue to be snapped in half at lot exits, and less than two months ago, six-foot-tall fences were installed around the gated lots to keep drivers from jumping the curbs to avoid paying.
Snapped arm pin
Sharon Waters, parking and telecommunications manager for the city, chalks most of the damage up to the nature of the Dickson Street area.
“You’re going to have vandalism in a bar district no matter what your program is,” said Waters.
With area business life, revenue numbers, the original goals of the plan, and even continued vandalism all accounted for, it looks like paid parking is here to stay.
Arguments, as far as the city is concerned, will likely have little impact outside of minor changes to the system.
Of course, by the time the equipment is paid for in a few years, it will be difficult to find a group of university students who can even recall life on Dickson Street before numbered spaces.
Will the rest of Fayetteville eventually surrender to the talking kiosks and gated arms of paid parking?
We’ll let you know.
I have never paid to park and never will. My family and I used to go down there every few weeks, now we go down there every few months, if even that. Thanks for messing up the beast thing Fayetteville had going for it. I’m still waiting to see what happens when the WAC moves up north.
Wow– Dickson Street has lost a once-every-few-weeks customer. If Dickson Street is “the beast [sic] thing Fayetteville had going for it”, then it is a damn good thing. How could paying a little for parking mess it up? You’d think that paid parking could mess up only marginal or bad things. Of course, you might not value DIckson Street as highly as you let on. If that is the case, then your complaint would seem to be meaningless.
The Walton Arts Center isn’t moving up north.
Thanks for posting.
You sound very angry. Maybe you just need a drink.
I think more people with money to spend are going to Dickson than were before. Crowds seem more upscale than in years past.
Not making a judgement on that either way. Just an observation.
i’ve noticed more bycycles around dickson with the paid parking which i think is pretty cool!! People are using the alternative transportation to get excercise and avoid forking over a few bucks. : )
I think some people may be frustrated by what I perceive as this- the population of this region will continue to grow with Fayetteville being the main spot for entertainment/night life/culture and we need to create more parking to prepare. The end result of the paid parking is a 300 spot parking deck when there are nearby parking decks that sit empty, and our tax dollar is stretched to cover the man hours of the city employees who repair damaged parking meters, write tickets, etc. – not sure I’m the biggest fan.
Hey Ryan, thanks for chiming in. (Everyone, Ryan and I are friends in real life.) I know we disagree on whether or not paid parking was the right idea or whether the timing was right. I did want to point out one factual error: tax dollars aren’t used to pay for man hours associated with paid parking or for equipment repairs. Those things are funded by the parking revenue itself.
I also wanted to make clear one other point of disagreement. The end result isn’t a parking deck, at least in my mind. When I was deciding whether or not to vote for the program, I tried to have a longer-term view than a simple parking deck. The end result – and this is the reason I voted for the plan – is that the building of a parking deck will allow the existing surface parking lots to be used for the development and growth of Dickson St. Over the coming decades, growing Dickson means constructing new buildings. There is a choice associated with the placement of those buildings: will we destroy existing buildings or not? The surface parking lots are prime real estate for future development, but before the pressure to develop those pieces of real estate mounts, we needed a plan to maintain existing parking capacity. Paid parking and the facilities we are able to pay for because of the revenues it brings in are a part of that plan.
This is a 50-year view. If we assume that there will be no population growth and all of the buildings currently there will remain relatively unoccupied, then relying on the Underwood parking deck would make sense. I believe time would prove those assumptions wrong, so much so, that I’m willing to spend my political capital to vote for what I perceive are the best interests of Fayetteville.
Its not a bad plan, Petty.
So “parking revenue” is somehow not “tax dollars”?
I’m sure you can parse some kind of definition that these funds are not technically taxes, but I think the general public understands this is a tax on parking on streets and in lots that were formerly free.
I’m not even voicing an opinion pro or con regarding paid parking, just asking Mr. Petty to please not hide behind jargon.
I’m not going to spend a lot of time arguing semantics, but the manner in which Ryan used the term implied that general funds which every citizen pays into are being used for specific services which don’t provide benefit to every citizen. That’s not the case here. There are no general revenues being used for any of the activities in question.
I really couldn’t care less if you refer to it as a tax or a user fee, so long as you’re clear only those who use the service are paying for the associated costs.
Obvious headline is obvious.
David if you think the WAC is going to be anything but a shell of it’s former self, you are beyond hope. I will pray for you.
I don’t want to get very involved in another argument about the future of the WAC, because that’s been hashed out here so many times before. I just to take the time to point out one fact that seems to be consistently ignored by a certain portion of the commenters here:
There are more than 30,000 seats in the WAC system. All but 2200 of them are in Fayetteville.
I think you mean “planned”. There are over 30,000 seats “planned” for the WAC system, and 19,200 of them are in Bud Walton Arena.
You’re right, I did mean planned.
If there there was ever a cause for divine intervention . . .
Your darn right I am angry. These folks are screwing with my town. If you dint like somthing do you get angry, upset or frustrated?
This dead horse again. Hooray.
There are many places to park on and around Dickson that don’t require you to pay. If you haven’t found them by now, you’re not looking hard enough.
With all due respect to Mr. Petty, an alternate view of the future looks like this:
http://www.swfinstitute.org/other-swf-news/morgan-stanleys-11-billion-makes-chicago-taxpayers-cry/
[next iteration up from Public/Private Partnerships]
snip:
According to Bloomberg, “Chicago drivers will pay a Morgan Stanley-led partnership at least $11.6 billion to park at city meters over the next 75 years, 10 times what Mayor Richard Daley got when he leased the system to investors in 2008.
Morgan Stanley, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Allianz Capital Partners may earn a profit of $9.58 billion before interest, taxes and depreciation, according to documents for a $500 million private note sale by their Chicago Parking Meters LLC venture.
Wow. Looks like Mayor Daley made a HUGE mistake by leasing the Chicago parking system away to other investors. I doubt Fayetteville will make the same mistake. Government functions and services should have a break-even motive, instead of a profit motive.
While this is not a move I would encourage Fayetteville to make, the quote you chose doesn’t tell the whole story. If you run the numbers, it is not shocking to make 10 times the purchase price over 75 years. In fact, I just ran them, that is an implied return of 3.12% a year. If you want to check my math, the formula is 1.0312^75 = ~10.
Click all the way through to the full Bloomberg story, and you will see this quote from the CFO of Chicago:
“The concession agreement was absolutely the best deal for Chicagoans,” Gene Saffold, Chicago’s chief financial officer, said in an Aug. 5 e-mail.
While profit estimates in the bond-offering documents were “fairly optimistic,” they were also “relatively in line with our projections when we valued the system’s current value of between $700 million and $1.1 billion,” Saffold said.
“The net present value of $11.6 billion in revenue over the life of the 75-year agreement is consistent with $1.15 billion the city received,” he said.
***
Please save your gasps and “HUGE mistake” allegations for more worthy targets.
And there are numerous other quotes in the article presenting different opinions from the CFO. Leasing public property to fill budget gaps, like Chicago did in this case, is something that needs to be thought through more carefully than appears the case here. There are allegations that the present value of the system was incorrectly calculated and that the value of the city property over the timeline of the lease was also not presented to the Council.
The whole thing isn’t really relevant for Fayetteville, whether you think the manner in which Chicago made this decision is questionable or not.
Crystal clear logic. If the numbers sound scary and support your position, shout them from the rooftop. If the numbers counter your position, vaguely insinuate some kind of miscalculation.
My bet woud be the private operators would make a profit, but would also run the parking program more efficiently and effectively than the City of Chicago. Of course, these days a comparison of investment bankers and Chicago politicians is almost the definition of a ‘race to the bottom’. :)
In the spirit of civility, for the second time in this thread I am agreeing with Mr. Petty that this Chicago situation is not relevant to Fayetteville.
Do you happen to know how parking income to the City breaks down in terms of what’s generated from parking meters versus parking ticket fines?
Off the top of my head, no, I don’t.
Rumour has it that the City garners $3m per year from its share of traffic fines.
Be nice to have a City staffer confirm this.
Seems like a big # to me, have just paid $95 for an EXPIRED Registration.
Maybe other folks can speak to what happens if you DON’T PAY. (Fines double? Bench warrants? other fees?) Who needs taxes with so many *fees* to pay?
‘how parking income to the City breaks down in terms of what’s generated from parking meters versus parking ticket fines ‘
I for one would sure appreciate it if you could find that information for us.
I’ve submitted a request for the information, but it will be a few days before it comes in because the staff member is out of the office.
I’ll post the information here when I receive it. However, with all due respect, any citizen could request this information by emailing or calling the parking office. No need to rely on me to get it for you.
If I am not mistaken, this information was presented to the City Council at the Agenda Session on Tuesday, October 11. I could be wrong about that, and I can’t find the video to confirm, but I did see a lot of financial details on the PowerPoint as I watched it live online.
Here is the report from the agenda session.
Have yet to pay for parking on dickson. Never will. I just park not much they can do. If they impound my 200 dollar hunk of crap than I just buy a new one. It’s not like a 1980 Accord with 400,000 miles is hard to find these days.
Here’s an idea which mirrors the kind of difficulties we face going forward.
So we think we need to build some monster edifice to solve our parking problem?
Why not> We have scads of parking lots close to Dickson: Raz-back stadium, United Methodist, UBC, Baum stadium all huge. Instead of building a one-off monstrosity & then, presumably, having to service the debt to build the thing, why not invest in human beings?
Meaning: organizing a shuttle service, a park & ride on a medium scale–meet some strangers along the way. Not the instant satisfaction we are accustomed to, but this kind of *instant* is bound to get more expensive.
Bottom line: instead of temporary jobs for construction & long-term debt, we get some long-term jobs, (space for entrepreneurs to step up), if’n only some folks are willing to re-think their ownership rights–as opposed to rights of use (which is what you pay for when you park). Ownership without use is wealth–only in the abstract. Users and owners working together produces real economic effect.
Parking on the UA campus is becoming increasingly scarce as the student population (and needed fac/staff to handle increased growth) so the pit and Baum can be scratched off the list. Particularly if the long term plan to close the core of campus to vehicle traffic and force all parking to the outskirts comes to fruition.
I think a new business opportunity is popping up in Fayetteville: “Parking Services Inc.” I have a feeling with the new deck will come new congestion, especially when the old lots start to get developed. Looks like someone might make a buck organizing attendants to ensure smooth entrance and exiting.. The city or WAC signs a contract with the company to attend and secure the parking lots, and they hire local students to do the work.. Already happened in the WAC lots, and I bet the WAC would rather hire a private party to handle parking then increase their payroll and risk… Just an idea
Thanks for doing this. My impression that you as member of the council would get priority treatment was the reason I asked.
No problem. Just so you know, the City is required by law to respond to requests of this sort within 24 or 48 hours. I don’t remember which; it’s been a while since I brushed up on that section of the FOIA.
Need a parking garage?
The world’s largest collection of empty ones can be found in Detroit city.
Wake up people. This is our future–
http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2011/02/07/captured-the-ruins-of-detroit/2672/
As long as people are willing to pay for parking, the city will charge you for parking. It’s only $5. Not a big deal. I don’t see why everyone complains so much. It’s $5 and for a bar district, it’s not like they’re charging you to go to church or the grocery store. Don’t want to pay the city out of principle? There are valet services. Can’t afford $5? Stay home.