Maybe your best bet is that you will basically be the only one parking in the cramped garage and therefore there will be no one else will be parking next to you.

Both situations may be just dreaming though.

So, there would be a certain number of smaller stalls (existing size) and then some stalls that are larger to accommodate larger-than-average vehicles. Since the larger stalls take up more room, there would be fewer of them, so they’d cost more.

In the end, the garage would collect the same amount of money, Chevy Subdivisions would have a place to park and normal size vehicles would park as usual.

Regading the editor’s note above, true, Ameritel and other hotels have to build their own parking lots, but it comes at a huge public cost. Places like the mall, for example, are about half parking lot by surface area, a quarter roads and a quarter for the actual building destination – a horrendously inefficient use of land and infrastructure. As a result, the ACHD must make roads wider and longer simply to accommodate the huge private parking lots. The huge parking lots mean people drive a couple of hundred feet from one parking lot to the other, causing more air pollution. Impact fees can’t begin to cover this. Sweet deal for the airport-area hotels.

Garages are very space efficient and allow public streets to be shorter and smaller. They’re a good investment.

How is this indoor parking a sweet deal for Hampton guests? I thought we were saying the parking spots were too small & not good.

EDITOR NOTE–Sweet deal isHampton doesn’t have to provide ANY parking because they get the CCDC to do it for them and just rent. Ameritel and all those airport area hotels have to buy their own land, build parking lots, and maintain them.

Though the 380 spaces are hard to squeeze into, if none were built these non-existent spaces would be murder to get into. But more to the point, if a city’s zoning ordinance is viewed as a legal proxy for the will of the people – and adherence to the terms of the ordinance is seen as the best way to protect the health, welfare, and safety of the public – why is any tax money being used to subsidize parking that the PUBLIC has already said it doesn’t need. I can understand why Mark Rivers wants parking for his tenants, but why is any public money being spent to construct off-street parking within the P-1 District? If CCDC wishes to subsidize downtown development with its pre-approved bonding capacity, let it focus on what the public has already said it wants – and eliminate the agency’s ability to fund development that does not comply with the will of the people. If CCDC (or Boise City administration) have a beef with this line of thinking, it can choose to eliminate or modify the Parking District Overlay language.

Stop trying to subvert the law.

FYI, one of the newer (and more successful) examples of this kind of urban infill is Santana Row in San Jose. It also has structured parking (but with very gracious drive aisles and stall widths), and everyone parks for FREE. It’s easy to bash Californians, but it looks like they got it right with Santana Row.

The city regulations say a developer has to provide so many parking spaces for so many stores of a certain size and type. To get a good store and restaurant mix (restaurants taking up more parking spaces than stores), BoDo has to build a parking structure with X-amount of lots in it. Okay, but there are also restrictions on the parking structures physical size because it has to fit on a specific lot, hemmed in by busy city streets. And the building can only be so tall because it is in the viewscape between the Depot and the Capitol Building.

The answer for the developer would have been to use existing store space for more parking – evicting existing tenants – or to make a taller building – something that may have been impossible to do.

The deal sounds like a bad compromise all around (shrinking the turning radii and stall size). The City of Boise is going to face this same issue again and again as downtown redevelopment continues. If we want parking downtown and if we want a vibrant downtown, we’re going to have make some concessions. I just don’t know yet what that should be.

The original ‘concept’ for BoDo shows the parking garage was supposed to be 450 space on 5 levels – 4 above and 1 below. The current design is 380 spaces. You have to wonder where the other 70 spaces would have fit.

EDITOR NOTE–Good points all, but the parking structure is owned by Boise’s urban renewal agency, the CCDC (Capitol City Devbelopment Corp.) and it is built with tax money.

I think the Idaho First building (US Bank) was one of the first Boise building projects to ignore design review. I remember it wasn’t supposed to be so tall. The connector was supposed to be elevated which would have prevented BoDo. Let’s get rid of design review so we can just sue them if they don’t do what they say they will. Design review seems to give them the ok to do what ever they want.