Lake Street Council’s goal is to identify the key opportunities to improve that experience.
Our first and foremost assumption is that vacant parking spaces in a fully leased project do not benefit anyone and have a negative impact on the built environment.
Lake Street Council is in the process of identifying parking lot ownership from Mississippi River Blvd. to Lake Calhoun. Key areas of opportunity are 27th & Lake and Bloomington & Lake.
We are studying the opportunities and challenges to shared parking. The Urban Land Institute has done significant work in this area and we plan to tap into their expertise. In order for shared parking to be most effective, it is important that all spaces be conveniently located and accessible to all users. We will measure walking distances from parking areas to destinations and we will explore various techniques of managing parking to encourage the sharing of parking, including parking charges. This exploration will cover the pros and cons of customer parking charges and employee parking charges.
To create a parking district, our shared parking analysis will require projecting parking needs for our specific combination of businesses in each of these areas, including surveying existing conditions and discussing parking management strategies with all the stakeholders, to ensure that shared parking can occur as assumed in our study phase. We assume that these conversations will result in additional recommendations for directional signage and improved design of our pedestrian system.
Additional funding will be required and may include municipal bonding, additional metering or increased cost, CDBG funding, MNDoT, and TOD funding. This commercial corridor initiative that is expected to result in the establishment of a parking district will also require the business community to contribute.
While we are exploring Parking Improvement Districts to manage a perceived parking problem in specific areas, the districts when established should pro-actively shape increased development in a more positive way.
