Leaders mull ways to improve parking in downtown Auburn | Auburn

Downtown Merchants Association coordinator Jessica Kohn said one resounding issue is brought up at each monthly meeting of downtown Auburn business owners.

“A huge hurdle is employees not having designated parking spaces for them,” Kohn said. “Unless business owners lease parking spaces, that’s really the only way they’re guaranteed a space. Certain business owners tell their employees to catch a ride or walk.”

On average, 125 employees work at businesses downtown each day, she added. Not having them park their personal vehicles downtown frees parking spaces for customers. Yet the rallying cry from people who work, shop and eat in Auburn is that there is simply not enough parking space available to everyone.

“In all the parking studies we’ve done, we’ve always been told that what Auburn needs is not one huge deck with 1,000 cars or 2,000 cars. It’s several little spaces,” interim city manager Jim Buston said. “Because our town is not that big; our town is small. But we need smaller locations around town where we can put parking.”

That was addressed in the 2017 Parking Plan, which the city unveiled last week. The plan, authored by assistant city manager Kevin Cowper, addresses parking issues and offers both short- and long-term proposed solutions.

Also this week, Buston sent a memorandum to city council members, making them aware of negotiations in progress between the city and private business owners that are not yet ready to be officially presented.

“Now, both of those negotiations are going really well, and we expect them to come to council,” Buston said.

Parking for employees

One of the negotiations is between the city and Auburn Bank. If the deal closes and the bank sells a gravel lot on its property to the city, the city could pave that into an actual parking lot, creating an estimated 109 spaces for downtown employees.

“So we would have 109 employees who work downtown, who could go there and park for free,” Buston said. “We still have to work it out with the downtown merchants, but we’re looking at having them give us the tag number of the car that they drive. Then we’ll have plate recognition on the gate. If it recognizes you should park there, it will open up and let you park there.”

Kohn said Cowper usually attends the downtown merchant meetings, and that the business owners frequently inquire about the possibility of a designated lot.

“That would take a lot of stress off of our business owners,” Kohn said. “It’s a reliability issue, too. If an employee is scheduled to be there at 2:00, and they don’t get there until 2:30, it might be because they were riding around, looking for a (parking spot), or because they couldn’t find one and went back home to get a ride.”

Buston said the city had originally hoped to close the deal with Auburn Bank before the start of the 2017-2018 academic year, but now, he said it could go before the council at its Aug. 15 meeting.

“But we’ve generated a memo of understanding, and now the lawyers are involved,” he said. “As soon as all that gets done, then we’ll take it to the council and say, ‘This is what we want to do. This is how much it’s going to cost us. This is when we want to start.’ If the council says yes, then we’ll start.”

Parking for patrons

For the general public, the city is also in talks to purchase the Baptist Student Center on North College Street, demolishing the current building and constructing a parking deck on the property. Although the local Baptist campus ministry is in favor of selling its building to the city, the sale must be approved by a regional board in August, and then face a final vote at the Alabama Baptist Convention in November.

Pending approval from the state Baptist convention, the motion would be presented to the Auburn city council either at its second November meeting or first December meeting, Buston said.

“One thing we don’t want to do is impact retail negatively,” Buston said of the city’s desire to put a parking deck at the BSC location. “Let’s just say, if someone wanted to sell us Toomer’s Corner, we don’t want to put a parking deck on Toomer’s Corner. That just doesn’t make any sense. But we knew that the Baptists were looking at relocating. They like where they are, but they don’t need college-front visibility for what their mission is. Their mission is to have a place for students to come, have fellowship and study.”

To city officials, the Baptist center’s building on North College Street would be the perfect location for a downtown parking deck. The proposed deck would fit roughly 250 vehicles, and a new Baptist Student Center would be located on the bottom level of the deck, facing Wright Street.

“Initially, up front, we’ll have a little park,” Buston said. “We’ll have benches and landscaping, but that’s just temporary. We know that eventually, the property on either side of that property is going to redevelop. At that point, we want to make sure we have space. The front area will be commercial. Once that goes there, it will hide the deck completely, so you won’t even see it from College Street.”

When that happens, he continued, the parking facility will essentially blend in with the downtown buildings and nearby university landscape. All vehicle access would be from Wright Street, with pedestrian access on College.

“The important thing is to know it’s a multi-step process,” Buston said. “We aren’t putting all of our eggs in one basket. We’re trying a strategic location for parking.”

One of the first aspects of the parking plan to roll out is the downtown parking app, launching in conjunction with Auburn’s remodeled website. The application and website rely on sensors in downtown parking lots to let visitors know where parking spots are available. Parking lots are listed, along with the number of unoccupied spots.

Users can also view maps of each specific lot to see where they can park. Green parking spaces are unoccupied, while red spaces have a vehicle in that spot.

The desktop version updates every two to three seconds, and the mobile version does so about every 30 seconds, Buston said.

“We intend to keep rolling out more and more sensors and just add to this app, so you would be able to look anywhere there’s parking downtown,” he added.

The site is scheduled to launch July 31 and will be demonstrated for the city council on Aug. 1.

Parking alternatives

Also at its meeting Tuesday, the council is scheduled to vote on a resolution to provide valet parking services downtown. The city tested the valet services at its SummerNight Downtown Artwalk and Cheers on the Corner events.

Other items in the plan that should eventually come before the city council include raising parking rates from 25 cents per hour to $1 per hour, extending meter hours of operation and increasing fines for parking violations. Each point of the plan is a separate item that will be presented to the council at the appropriate time.

“When we get ready to raise rates, we’ll have to have a presentation to the council at one of their meetings. That gives them the opportunity to know it’s coming,” Buston said. “They can talk to constituents and see how people are feeling. Then they vote on it. If it passes, we go forward. If it doesn’t, we go back to the drawing board.”

The interim city manager said he believes the future of Auburn means the city will become more pedestrian-friendly, mirroring the college campus. He said residents could park on the periphery of downtown to walk or bike to the shops and restaurants in town.

The city has already tested one e-bike, a motorized bicycle modeled after the university’s bike share program. Riders could pedal the vehicle, but a small motor would help less physically-capable riders make it up hills or ride for longer periods of time.

“Maybe we could set e-bikes down at Carolyn Apartments and you can ride the two blocks (to downtown) instead of walk,” Buston laughed, referring to a property on West Glenn Avenue the city recently purchased and intends to turn into a free public parking lot. “As part of the plan, you’ll see we’re being more bike-friendly, more pedestrian-friendly. So we call it a parking plan, but it’s more of a bigger plan of just making the downtown more enjoyable.”

An improved parking situation would make the downtown Auburn experience more enjoyable for patrons, but it would assist downtown business owners as well.

“They did tell us in April they were working on a parking plan, and they would make it available before football season, which they did,” Kohn said. “The city has done a good job communicating with the merchants, saying, ‘We understand this is a problem, and we’re working on it.’”