I’ve been very critical of the plans for the new parking deck in downtown Fayetteville that we will not be allowed to use for baseball games and community events.  I won’t re-hash those same arguments.  The bun is in the oven on the deal, and we will be able to hold our elected leaders accountable for its success or failure.

A preliminary report is in from the “parking expert” the City Council hired out of Indianapolis to assess the situation.  Unsurprisingly, the consultant still needs more time to finish his evaluation.  It’s only been five months, after all, so he’s still on the clock.  The final report is coming later.

In the meantime, he says we’ll be fine for games, but we’ll have parking problems during larger events.   He suggests we conduct a marketing campaign and add automated signs and smartphone apps that will tell people where to park.  He also recommends that we adjust our paid parking regulations (charge more money).

The future for downtown parking seems obvious:  less supply + greater demand = paid parking for everyone that can afford it.  We’ve made a commodity out of our downtown public space.  It’s no longer ours, it’s the City’s, and we’ll pay to use it.

A SIMPLE IDEA

I have complained enough.  Here’s a solution that may help:

We don’t need a marketing campaign or smartphone app to get us out of a problem of our own making.  We need more parking spaces next to the stadium, preferably free spaces.  This will encourage more Fayetteville families to attend more games.

On the left is an overhead shot of Festival Park which is adjacent to the new stadium.  On the right is a photo-shopped image of the courthouse with its parking lot covering Festival Park.  This gives you a sense of scale (Festival Park is roughly the size of the courthouse and its back parking lot).

Here’s a crude mock-up from my Iphone of what I could see working:

I’m not suggesting we pave over festival park.  The point is that the grassy lawn could hold several hundred vehicles within a 5 minute walk of the stadium.  Restrooms are already present for families to use.  Food trucks and vendors could even line the Linear Park walkway to catch people on the way to the game.  If the grass gets damaged, I’m sure Methodist College’s Turf Management students could assist us in keeping up the field for concerts and other events.

In the end, this is just an idea and one of many that will be needed to get around this problem.  I just wish we could park in our 15 million dollar deck, right frigging next to the stadium.

Feel free to share your thoughts.  Maybe our parking consultant from Indianapolis is listening.

Early this Spring, this website brought to light the details behind the new parking deck being built next to our baseball stadium in downtown Fayetteville.  Most importantly, I broke the news that the public would not get to use any of the spaces.  Rather, the spaces in our deck were contractually reserved for Prince Charles Holdings, LLC, our new “business partners.”  In short, Fayetteville is paying 15 million dollars for a parking deck its citizens cannot use so that rich investors will build a hotel in downtown Fayetteville.

The news caused a stir.  City Manager Doug Hewitt went on the radio and criticized my findings.  Other interested parties came out of the woodwork in defense of the deal, but they couldn’t kill the story.  The Fayetteville Observer got in the mix and began asking questions.

A few weeks later, in response, the mayor and the city council did what any smart municipal government does when it can’t answer hard questions and needs to buy time:  order a study!

Yes, we’ve hired some “parking professional” to spend our tax dollars to tell us that when you take away 800 parking spaces from a growing downtown and increase demand by building a stadium, your citizens might not have a place to park.  The “big reveal” of the results of the study is Monday night.

Can’t wait.

They said Florence would be a “Mike Tyson punch” compared to Matthew.   Well, they were wrong.  It was many Mike Tyson punches, for four long days. Southeastern North Carolina woke up today bruised and swollen.  The good news is that we’re catching our breath as the sun peaks out between the clouds.

Cross Creek (the namesake of this blog and the colonial village that eventually turned into Fayetteville) is falling in downtown.

Here’s some additional good news, something you might miss in the coverage:  The Cape Fear River, the subject of an unprecedented, mandatory evacuation is not reaching its predicted levels:

We’re about four feet below the predicted level.  You can keep up with the rising water using this link.

Pray this good news stays good news.