Downtown Parking offers game of chance

From Suttree's days of "derelict trucks piled with produce and flowers. . . and country commerce," Knoxville's Downtown has zipped right past the "toe-tapping country music of WNOX on Lowell Blanchard's "Midday Merry-go-round," and the ghosts of buildings past to become a vibrant, young-centric and exciting city. Today, downtown Knoxville no longer reflects the faded daguerreotype of the 1950s and '60s. Instead the city displays a strong resurgence of energy and change that began in 1993 with the creation of the Downtown Central Business Improvement District (CBID).

And along with that morphing of time and space has come another serious SimCity-like continuum factor: Parking a vehicle of any size or description in downtown Knoxville means entering a maze of chance and confusion although there are roughly 17,000 spaces available on any given day.

At the same time, also on any given day, Knoxville's central nervous system, the CBID, is flooded with 22,000 people in vehicles and another 2,000 residents, some of whom also work in the area. And in the space-time reality of downtown, if you build more parking spaces, they will come. In droves. Solution: no new public parking lots are on the drawing board. The city is not quite boundary-bound, but it is reaching the point where parking will have to go high-rise instead of flat asphalt.

Within the last five years, downtown Knoxville has experienced a renaissance in new businesses, condominiums, special events, restaurants and movie theaters, transforming the CBID into something of a destination, rather than just a place to pay a utility bill or encounter the wild harangue of street preachers or staggering drug and alcohol-addled derelicts.

Downtown Knoxville, then, is not your father's or mother's downtown. Things have changed. And this growth spurt has placed a strain on an already saturated parking situation. Both public lots and private lots were bulging at the seams just prior to the economic downturn, with monthly fees for both public and private parking ranging from a low of $30 to a high of $140. Hourly fees go from around $1 up to $8.

There are no meters on Gay Street, the city's main traffic artery to downtown, but signage sets the parking rules. Some downtown spaces provide 15-minute and 30-minute parking, designed to allow patrons to have quick in-and-out services, such as pickup and delivery of dry cleaning, stop and shop, pay bills or fast banking transactions.

The only meters on Gay Street are in the 100 block of Gay Street, where they are currently blocked off because of construction. Elsewhere, parking is free for one hour. The rub, say Knoxville Police Department officers charged with ticketing cars for parking violations, comes with customers staying beyond the allowed time limit. Fifteen minutes means fifteen minutes. It is, under the law, illegal to overstay the time allotted in a free or metered space. Nor is it okay to "feed the meter" for a longer stay.

As for parking spaces, Hannah Parker, Policy Analyst and Policy Coordinator in the Department of Policy and Communications for Knoxville, says there should be enough to handle day-to-day traffic. The city and Knox County combined have 10 public parking garages in or near downtown.

Another on-street set of street parking lots provides additional spaces. Currently, the city has negotiated to purchase a parking lot on Jackson Avenue for $1.3 million, pending approval by City Council.

"Unfortunately, we do not have a definitive closing date," Parker says. But the city will continue to lease the lot until it is purchased, and "regardless of closing date, folks will continue to have access to the free public parking offered by this lot."

The city recently acquired or is in the process of acquiring two more additional lots: the Old City Lot and the Magnolia Street lot under Bridge 16.

The Old City Lot, which holds about 200 vehicles, is fully operational, Parker says. The other two lots (one of which is on Jackson Avenue), when completely operational, will also hold 200 vehicles each, she says. All three lots are free all day, and there "are no plans in place to change that."

In addition, the city contracts with the Public Building Authority to manage a number of lots and garages, even though the spaces are owned privately. Other private lots scattered about downtown charge whatever the market will bear.

Central Parking System (CPS), one of Knoxville's larger private parking firms, is part of one of the largest parking management operations in the nation, with about 2,500 facilities and 1.2 million spaces. In Knoxville, CPS has about 40 locations with roughly 1,500 to 2,000 spaces. CPS's monthly rates in Knoxville run from $40 to $140 and hourly from about $1 up to $10 for the day.

Chris Zachritz, general manager for CPS, says he rarely hears that the lots are too costly for downtown parking. Before the 2009 recession, he says it was difficult to find a parking space downtown. Today, he says, CPS's parking revenue is "down 10 to 12 percent across the board. So, with the economy the way it is now, I believe there are plenty of spaces for monthly or daily parking in downtown."

CPS also manages one facility for the city Ñ Promenade Garage on State Street. In addition, one of its management clients is St. John's Cathedral, 413 Cumberland Ave., which owns an adjacent parking lot, free on Sundays but managed by CPS during the week.

"We are here to encourage people to come down and visit our city," Zachritz says. Soon, he adds, visitors will be able to find parking spaces in real time over CPS's Internet site.

Visitors to Knoxville for special events, such as University of Tennessee football games, will find some free parking on "game day." Also, parking is free at any public facility after 6 p.m., and on weekends, including parking meters.

"Comparatively speaking, Knoxville's parking rates hold up well and are extremely competitive with those of other cities," Parker says. And, she adds, the city has studied parking problems in Nashville and Memphis, as well as other cities of comparable size, like Asheville, N.C., and Greenville, S.C. "We are extremely competitive compared to those cities," Parker says.

Mast General Store, 402 S. Gay St., may be a good example of what Parker is talking about. Mast has nine stores scattered about East Tennessee and Western North Carolina. The store, which opened in Knoxville in August 2006, was a centerpiece in the downtown resurgence, and right now the store has no complaints when it comes to parking availability for its customers, according to Lisa Armstrong, area manager.

"Basically here on Gay Street the street front parking is free for an hour. Then there is a parking garage behind the store. It is a minimal amount and costs nothing at night and on weekends," she says. Another perk, she says, is that the city does not enforce the hour-long parking on the weekend, and nearby city parking facilities are free. On UT game day, Armstrong says, the store is usually filled "with a flood of orange. Some walk or use the (free) trolley cars."

However, those who attempt to game the system during the week may find their cars towed to the city's Impound Lot on Vice Mayor Jack Sharp Road in East Knoxville, where fines to retrieve towed cars can be daunting. The fine for parking in a tow away zone is $85 for the first three days. After that it is $8 per day for up to 30 days, after which the owner receives a certified letter telling him/her to come and retrieve the car. Eventually, cars not claimed by the owners are auctioned off.

The city's website says that about 6,000 vehicles a year are processed through this lot. "Along with other surplus city equipment, unclaimed impounded vehicles are sold at public auctions held when inventory warrants."

In addition, the city has a "boot" ordinance. An illegally parked vehicle can be "booted" with a device that immobilizes the vehicle. The ordinance went into effect in 2008 and empowers the Knoxville Wrecker Service Commission to enforce "booting" on private parking lots. Private lots that employ this device must have a license from the KPD, and the lots must be "signed," stating that the devices are in use. It can cost up to $75 to have the boot removed.

For KPD officers, parking is an everyday affair with its usual ups and downs. Sgt. David Powell, in charge of officers and police cadets in the CBID, says the biggest problem is "to get people to park in places that are legal and not abuse the policies."

Everyone who comes downtown, he says, is looking to park as close to his or her destination as possible. Sometimes people park in "commercial loading zones," which he says, "causes a domino effect. A truck will arrive to unload and if the zone is filled, will park on the street or double park," he says, which will then back up all traffic on the street.

"People need to get in the correct slots and obey the time limits," he says. Those time limits are based on research by the city's traffic engineers and how they estimate the flow of traffic.

"Another troublesome area for the KPD is people parking along yellow curbs," Powell says. "No parking is permitted along those curbs." It would be better, he says, if people parked in the garages and walked. He also mentioned that a city ordinance forbids feeding the meter, and his officers have even had patrons watch for them and rush out to pop in change for the meter just as the officer pulls out a parking ticket notebook. "The fact is, we have more vehicles than spaces," says Powell, but the meters, according to both Parker and Powell, are designed to turn over traffic within the specified time.

"Parkers who opt to park on Gay Street pay for convenience and location. The area is growing, and I wouldn't pretend to imply that we've Ôarrived' with the redevelopment that is taking place downtown," Parker says. "However, the metered-spaces on Gay Street are almost constantly and totally occupied. Having said that, I'll concede that on-street parking on Gay Street can be confusing to downtown newcomers."

In the future, Parker says, the city is studying the possibility of installing "parking kiosks," which will accept credit cards, bills or change. That option is still in the future. The city is also looking into "multiple parking metered spaces." That, too, is in the future.

"While it would be ideal to provide free spaces in front of the dry cleaners on Gay Street to allow folks the opportunity to run in and out to pick up dry cleaning, the reality is, it isn't feasible. Unfortunately, people take advantage of that system, and we would undoubtedly have employees of downtown businesses who would park there for the entire day and into the evening to avoid paying to park at a garage. In short, the meters provide the turnover that we are looking forÑwhich I would argue, helps downtown development continue."

Problems at the end of Gay Street in the 100 block are currently a huge headache. Construction keeps the street jammed, but Powell says visitors can go to 100 Block Construction to learn present conditions.

The city's Gay Street Streetscapes Project in the 100 block of Gay Street began Feb. 16, 2009, and is scheduled to run for 18 months as part of the city's $3.5 million program to build large underground vaults for electrical equipment, along with street and sidewalk replacement.

Currently, the KPD has six bicycle officers assigned specifically to downtown. They ride the streets from 8 a.m. until 2 a.m. Police cadets also help out with parking when they are not in police academy classes. At present all cadets are in school, but when they are on duty, about 10 of them work from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Only time will determine whether an improving economy will entice more visitors to downtown to frequent shops and enjoy entertainment venues and restaurants. But with the current pessimistic economic outlook, that possibility appears sometime off.

Regardless of upswings or downturns, getting a parking space in downtown Knoxville remains something of a blind roll of the dice.

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