Parking a city growth industry

ENJOYING THE RIDE: The new Weybosset Street Metropark lot is expected to benefit from work being done on several Financial District buildings. / PBN FILE PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN
ENJOYING THE RIDE: The new Weybosset Street Metropark lot is expected to benefit from work being done on several Financial District buildings. / PBN FILE PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN

Through the ups and downs of the always jittery Rhode Island economy, one Providence industry remains remarkably strong: parking.
From private surface lots to on-street city meters, demand for downtown parking is growing, managers say, pointing to continued resurgence in Providence’s retail, entertainment and restaurant businesses.
“People may think I am crazy, but demand is up,” said Charlie Meyers, president of Metropark Ltd., which just opened a new surface lot at 43 Weybosset St. behind the old National Bank façade. “Restaurants are doing better than last year and, yes, there are more people working downtown. I keep good statistics and demand is up.”
Meyers said Metropark’s citywide revenue is up 10 percent this year.
Metropark isn’t alone seeing parking revenue rise.
Since 2009, revenue from city parking meters has risen 55 percent, according to Providence Parking Administrator Leo Perrotta.
Based on revenue from the first half of the year, the city is on pace to collect $1.7 million for the year from its 1,520 parking meters, up from $1.4 million last year and $1.1 million in 2009, Perrotta said. The totals do not include any revenue from parking tickets.
Part of the increase is due to a rise in the number of meters – which had dipped to about 1,200 a few years ago due to the I-Way and other projects and has been reversed with the city making a conscious effort to add more on-street parking.
But Perrotta, who started in his position a year and a half ago, said those changes most likely don’t account for such a large increase in the number of quarters dumped into city meters.
“It is more meters, better enforcement, pricing, but it is also increased traffic and an increased number of people coming into downtown for events,” Perrotta said.
In addition to adding to the number of metered parking spaces, the city has also replaced old meters on Westminster Street with computerized units that allow drivers to pay with credit cards.
Despite the increase in metered spots in the last two years, the vast majority of the roughly 15,000 parking spots in Providence are in private lots, a total that has not remained static either.
The demolition last year of the six-story, 360-space Outlet Garage on Friendship Street, which was replaced by a 110-space surface parking lot, has placed greater demand on existing spaces.
Thus, in addition to the new Weybosset Street Metropark lot, there are plans to add even more off-street spaces to try to meet the added demand in the near future. Johnson & Wales University is planning to build a 700-space garage on the site of the Mirabar building on Richmond Street.
And not too far from downtown on Federal Hill, Omni Group is planning to build a two-level, 317-space garage on Cedar Street that would serve the firm’s office complex in the area, including a new proposed office building, and the night-time Atwells Avenue restaurant crowd.
With minimal capital costs, a quick build-out – asphalt, stripes and an attendant’s shack – steady revenue and the low property taxes of a vacant lot, the appeal of making surface lots is easy to understand, even as it has frustrated urbanists and planners who would rather see buildings in the city instead of asphalt and cars.
To slow their growth, planners cut out of the new city zoning plan approved in the spring the provision allowing property owners to put a surface parking lot on a temporary basis before proceeding with permanent building plans.
The new rules also require property owners to have detailed plans of replacement buildings before being issued a permit to tear a building down.
To get permission to open the Weybosset lot – which also included the civic priority of preserving the bank façade and moving the steel bracing off the street – Meyers had to wait approximately six months.
Cornish Associates runs the surface lot at Grant’s Block on Westminster Street and allows free parking between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. for customers of shops in the buildings the company owns in the neighborhood.
Joanna Levitt, director of leasing and marketing at Cornish, said businesses on Westminster Street have been doing well this year and that had led to an increase in demand for parking at Grant’s Block.
Still, even with the increased demand there is more than enough parking downtown for the level of activity there.
“In most urban centers you do not expect to always find on-street parking and you have to pay to park,” Levitt said. “That mentality has come along as Providence becomes more of an urban center.”
For downtown and merchant business groups, parking lots can be a sticky issue, because they don’t encourage foot traffic, but do bring in shoppers who aren’t interested in the city’s relatively limited public-transportation system. “Some people would like fewer surface parking lots in downtown,” said Frank LaTorre, director of public space for the Providence Downtown Improvement District. “But we just wanted to get the message out to people that, yes, you can park here.”
Working with the city and Providence Foundation, the Downtown Improvement District put together a website with maps showing every public parking space in the city and tools that can allow someone to find the closest spot to whatever location they are trying to get to.
The DID also worked with parking-lot owners and coordinated a training session for attendants to improve the customer service in those lots.
While demand for parking citywide may stay relatively solid, parking managers do report fluctuations in where demand is coming from and some areas are certainly doing better than others.
LaTorre said his impression was that the Empire Street area has been slow while the Financial District and the end of Westminster Street closer to the river are doing better.
Meyers sees a similar pattern.
“I divide the city in half: Matteson street and up is down and Matteson to the Financial District is up,” Meyers said.
And the Financial District should see demand pick up even more when renovations are completed and tenants landed for a series of buildings on Weybosset Street that have been undergoing rehabilitation.
Leading the list is the Arcade, which is being reopened with 48 small apartments on the second and third floors, none of which come with parking.
It also includes the Equitable Building, where 52 Restaurant and Lounge is set to open in the former Custom House Tavern space, and the former National Grid-owned buildings that include the Providence Gas building, Teste Block and Narragansett Hotel Garage, are also being renovated.
In addition, Flagstar Bancorp is planning to open a retail branch on the ground floor of the Textron Building.
All of that new activity promises to add more demand for Metropark’s new lot behind the bank façade, which was left behind when the rest of the building there was torn down for the construction of a 32-story condominium tower that was never built.
As a result of the lot’s central location, the convenience for those parking there will likely come at a relatively high price.
“I am paying the highest rents in the city, so the rates aren’t going to be the lowest,” Meyers said. •

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