Downtown Parking Solutions

By design, Downtown Districts are not meant to have optimal parking. That is why nearly every municipality, including McHenry, has a distinction between Citywide and Downtown minimum parking requirements. This model is appropriate when a Downtown is predominately commercial rather than multilevel housing, as McHenry currently is.

When a business decides to operate in a Downtown District, there is a trade-off: it will receive the benefit of the pedestrian traffic but will be at the expense of not having ideal parking. This is why locally-owned small shops and restaurants exist Downtown and big box stores and chain restaurants do not.

As frustrating as it is to not find parking when there are Downtown City events, if parking was adequate for these events that would mean too much Downtown space is being dedicated to parking for the average daily usage.

With that, Downtown parking is an issue that needs to be addressed.

To accommodate the Downtown District centered along Green Street, there are currently four public parking lots (283 non-street parking spaces total), as well as street parking. Shops and businesses have daytime parking needs, bars and restaurants have evening parking needs. What has happened, specifically along Green Street, is that the balance of daytime parking needs (shops and businesses) and evening parking needs (bars and restaurants) is off, with there being too heavily a need for evening parking. This has resulted in too many available parking spaces during the day and insufficient parking spaces in the evening, notably Friday through Sunday.

To address this problem, I met with an outside City Planner for guidance.

The easiest and most low-cost solution is to implement time restrictions on the current parking. Having time-restricted parking encourages vehicle turnover, ensuring that visitors to Downtown have a greater chance of accessing parking by prohibiting long-term parking. Most time-restricted parking is enforced during the daytime and open in the evenings. To address the over-use of evening parking though, McHenry would need to do the opposite, with time-restricted parking starting at 4:00PM on weekdays and all-day on weekends.

What this would look like:

* daily time restrictions on all street parking on Green Street and Riverside Drive, with a mix between 15-minute and two-hour parking spaces

* no time restrictions on all non-street parking spaces before 4:00PM Monday through Friday

* converting the nearest lots off of Green Street (east end of former bank lot, as well as Lower Court and Lower East Street Lots) to enforced two-hour restricted parking starting at 4:00PM Monday through Friday and all-day on weekends.

* daily unrestricted open parking in the furthest lots off of Green Street (west end of former bank lot and all parking on site of former funeral home)

A consequence of changing the majority of parking to time-restricted Monday through Friday starting at 4:00PM and all-day on weekends will be a lack of parking for local workers in the bars and restaurants who cannot leave to move their car every two hours. To accommodate workers, the Upper Court Street Lot of 37 spaces just behind the buildings on the east side of Green Street should be restricted to employee-only permit parking starting at 4:00PM Monday through Friday and all-day Saturday and Sunday . These permits should be free to ensure the employer does not transfer the cost of the permit to the worker.

All parking restrictions should be assessed on a bi-annual basis. If the parking situation does not see improvement, one option is to convert the furthest lot off of Green Street to City-owned metered parking. Despite an upfront investment from the City, metered parking typically generates profit within a few years.

The current administration pushed for a Citywide Food & Beverage Tax to fund Downtown parking. Not only would this be extremely unfair to bars and restaurants outside of the Downtown district, it would be unfair to the patrons who would be paying this tax, irregardless of whether or not they utilized the Downtown parking. Metered parking would eliminate the need for a Citywide Food & Beverage Tax and ensure that the people funding the taxpayer-owned Downtown parking lots are the ones utilizing it.

Another option is to maximize the current parking through the use of AI.  By allowing users to upload the dimensions of a parking lot and the immediate surrounding streets, companies such as TestFit use AI technology to generate a parking layout that maximizes usable parking spaces, facilitates smooth traffic flow, and complies with local regulations. This is the most cost-effective and reliable way to optimize the available parking and has short-term implementation. Because the current Downtown parking is so poorly configured, once optimized, the City will be able to not only increase available parking, but also landscape and plant trees to prevent the parking lots from becoming a heat island, as they currently are, as well as make the parking lots more visually appealing, as they currently are not.

So why has there seemingly been no effort to enhance the usability and appearance of the Downtown parking lots? I suspect this is because the City never intended to use these spaces as a parking lot, but rather market this large swath of undeveloped Downtown land to developers, as evidenced by the years the City spent working with Shodeen to develop this same land that is currently used for Downtown parking.

So what happens if there still is not enough parking?

Aside from occasional large events, a space-optimized and time-restricted shared parking model typically works. When this does not work is when there is a high-capacity performance venue that requires more parking than a Downtown location can accommodate.  The answer is not to alter the landscape and add more parking though since that would detract from the appearance and walkability of Downtown and is an expensive taxpayer-funded solution. Being a good Downtown neighbor means knowing when the needs of your business exceed your equitable fair share of public resources though, and, when that happens, the City’s priority should be encouraging relocation to other parts of the City versus expecting taxpayers to subsidize a privately-owned business’ parking shortage.

What I do not think should ever be an option is a covered parking garage. In addition to the extremely high cost and unattractive appearance, ask any woman if she feels safe in a covered parking garage alone at night. That answer alone is why a covered parking garage should never be an option. .