Written by: Matt Bunk
Ondine Baird is a downtown business owner, a member of the Downtowners Association board of directors and the newest member of the Bismarck Parking Authority. That combination gives her perspective from just about every angle on the challenges facing the city’s oldest commercial district – primarily, a lack of convenient parking.
Baird is among those who believe policy changes are needed as more retail businesses open downtown. She wants city leaders to designate downtown a historic district, establish slower speed limits in the area, create more street-level parking and offer free parking in the ramps at night.
Baird, who was appointed to the Parking Authority this spring, wants to make changes happen sooner rather than later. But she recognizes that government moves slowly and that it’s extremely difficult to change 30-year-old habits.
Last month, Baird was one of two Parking Authority members who voted to eliminate the $1-per-hour charge to park in one of the downtown ramps after regular business hours. But three other members of the panel shot down the proposal – even though it was only a temporary change – because they wanted more time to study the situation and find ways to appease a hotel operator doesn’t think free nighttime parking would be fair to daytime businesses.
We can probably agree that there’s a problem with the parking situation downtown. We have three ramps that are almost always empty and a whole lot of people don’t think there’s adequate parking. Tell me what you think about the idea of free parking in the ramps at night.
With the whole parking-ramp thing, I’m willing to try anything. I really am. But I honestly believe it’s just going to be subsidizing employee parking for the bars and really not many people using the ramps anyway. But I would love to be proven wrong.
So you don’t think that it would work, but you’ve also said you would support it and vote for it. I guess if you don’t think it would work, why don’t you just vote against it?
Well, here’s the problem with the Parking Authority: While we do have power to make decisions for the parking structures, and then we have one flat parking lot, everything needs to go through the City Commission.
What I wanted to do is what Dale (Zimmerman, the owner of Peacock Alley) was asking for in the beginning, which would be free parking from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. Well, then the city came back and told us that we can’t do that because we would be treating our paying customers differently than patrons of bars and restaurants or employees of bars and restaurants.
Then we tried this voucher system, and the whole thing was just poorly timed and poorly executed. You know, the only data we really got out of the voucher system was that it was the employees of the bars and restaurants using it.
So we’re trying to get our heads around that and see if there would be a way to work that, because I can see what the bar and restaurant group is saying. But we’re being told that we can’t do that by the city. So you can bring it up for a vote and I’ll vote for it. I want people to be able to use the ramps for free in the evening, but getting it past the city would be the next step.
Even if offering free parking at night means that just the bar and restaurant and hotel employees are using the parking ramps, it seems like that would be a good thing because that would free up more street-level spaces for customers. So what’s the problem?
Well, again, it’s a revenue issue. The city doesn’t want the Parking Authority to come begging for money every year. So if we start having completely free parking for all employees and we have no cash flow, then we’re going to have to go to the city and ask for money out of the general fund. And that’s what we don’t want, and that’s why they are putting their foot down on all these free parking offers.
If only downtown employees use the ramps at night – and I guess that doesn’t bother me at all – but from a business perspective, when you look at it like MedCenter One, which pays for parking spots in the Parkade (ramp), their employees use those 24/7. So if they find out that bar and restaurant employees are getting to park for free during their evening shifts, yet MedCenter One is still paying for their spots, that might raise a red flag for them. I don’t know if that’s going to happen, but that’s certainly been put out on the table as another reason why we need to think of a more creative way to do this parking-ramp thing.
The Parking Authority, from my understanding, has about $900,000 in the bank, so when you mention revenue problems can you explain what you mean by that?
Well, yeah, we do have a significant amount of money in the bank. For the past six months I’ve been pushing to use some of that funding for marketing to get people to try to use the ramps, especially if we have a free evening special. You can’t just offer something for free and not tell anybody about it.
I don’t think there has been much objection to that. It’s just that we still need to figure how to do that and then I think that the board itself would be willing to spend some money on it.
I guess I really haven’t figured out yet why we sit on all that cash, to be honest with you. But I think we are looking at some very significant renovations that need to be made at the Parkade building.
That seems to be everybody’s answer when I ask that question. They say they’re concerned about money. Then I say, you have almost $900,000. Then they say, uh, well, yeah.
Well, I know that there was a significant amount of work and actually a lot of money that went into to planning for a new ramp on 6th and Broadway, and that would be a significant expense. We would want to use our funding, plus (tax increment financing) funding, but all of that is completely on hold until we get some sort of answer on the (tax increment financing) lawsuit.
But, again, yeah, I’ll have to dig into that a bit more.
That actually brings up another question: Why do we need another parking ramp?
That project is probably another two or three years away. But, yeah, how can you sell something that you say isn’t a problem and then build another? I don’t know. I wasn’t on the Parking Authority when they did all that work. I would like to see the reasoning behind it, because I know that there was an actual real reason why they wanted to build this 6th and Broadway ramp.
In some of the places I’ve lived, it costs $15 just to get into a parking ramp, and that really never bothered me. But there was always someone there to make change or a credit card machine. This envelope thing where you put a dollar in it just seems like a nuisance.
We just installed a pay station at the Galleria (ramp) that takes debit, credit or cash.
Do you think that will get more people using the ramp?
I do, and I was happy that we started with that. I think the pay stations are good, but that still doesn’t end the need for customer service, for real-person customer service in parking ramps. So I don’t want to completely go away from having people and just having pay stations.
But I think it’s just ridiculous to have a ramp right now where you get an envelope on your windshield and then you have to put a check in it or cash. I mean I have a debit card, that’s what I carry with me. I don’t carry cash, and I rarely have a checkbook with me. So I’m with you, and that is a way that the parking authority is turning.
What about diagonal parking on the streets? I know that’s something that’s been looked at, and I think you have said you would like to see that as part of the solution.
I really think this is the time to take a serious look at that, especially now with all of this building and everything that’s going on downtown. But it all needs to be looked at as part of the larger plan.
When anyone is going to construct a building downtown, the Renaissance Zone Authority has to approve your plan because they want it to stay historic downtown. Well, if it’s going to be that way, then I think there needs to be a commitment to designate it as a historic downtown, and it needs to be made friendlier for walking traffic and for biking traffic. And to do that you need to have narrower streets, and you need the speed limit to be slower.
So whether diagonal parking is a good idea or not a good idea – I’ve read parking studies that say if you can stay away from diagonal parking, you should. This is just me throwing out an idea that has nothing to do with an opinion of the Parking Authority or anything, but one way to slow down traffic is to narrow the streets, and one way to narrow the streets is to have diagonal parking. Fifth Street is certainly wide enough for that, and if it needed to be a little bit wider there are gigantic sidewalks on that street – so there’s no reason that a foot or two couldn’t be taken out of the sidewalk.
A lot of people don’t like diagonal parking. If you’re in a lower-profile vehicle and parked next to a higher-profile vehicle, it can be very difficult to back up. I totally get that. But parallel parking isn’t ideal either. It would be hilarious, if it wasn’t so horrible, to watch how terribly bad people are at parallel parking. So I just think it would be easier for people to park if there was diagonal parking on some of the streets and if the speed limit was lowered.
Do you think the city should consider lifting some of the restrictions on street-level parking during big events like the Downtowners Street Fair? I mean, the whole reason for doing those events is to get people to come downtown, enjoy themselves and spend some money.
Well, right. I’m with you. I’m on board. But that goes right back to what we were talking about before. The problem with free parking in the ramps is that we have contractually obligated the management company to maximize profits.
With Street Fair, it’s one of the biggest moneymaking weekends, so that’s basically asking us to reverse 30 years of what they have been doing so well, which is maximizing profits. It’s not a very popular view, to say the least, so it has to be a complete philosophical 180 for us to say, OK we are going to use these taxpayer-produced structures and we are going to use them as an economic engine instead of a moneymaker.
It just all ties together. It goes back to, how do you do that? How do you assess costs and who’s going to pay for it?
It’s hard to change something that’s been going on for three decades, so it’s this radical idea – if you can even use the word “radical” when talking about parking – but you can see how that’s not going to be a very popular thing.
But we are turning that way. I’ve had conversations with other Parking Authority members, and I think they get it too. They know it’s the way to go, but it’s a long road to change that much in a short period of time. And, you know, it’s our failure that we are not making things happen more quickly. But sometimes you need to have things change over a longer period of time.
When it comes to maximizing profits with the parking downtown, what are your thoughts on refocusing what the Parking Authority is trying to do? I mean, the city is spending millions of dollars to revitalize downtown and at the same time scraping together a few bucks from the parking. And a lack of parking is, from what I understand, one of the biggest issues for downtown businesses.
We really want to get all this good economic stuff going on downtown. And, to me, the problem is that we’re kind of at a critical mass right now, and there’s only going to be more development happening and more people coming downtown.
We all just need to agree that we need to implement all levels of a parking change. We need to deal with on-street parking once and for all. We need to deal with the ramps once and for all. We need to maximize occupancy.
I would prefer that we start making the changes now before it gets to the point where – and I’m just throwing this out there – developers decide not to do projects downtown and go to the north side of Bismarck instead because it’s much easier to get parking. It would be just shameful if that happened.
What are you guys doing about those envelopes that are used for depositing payments in the parking ramps? They have notes on them that threaten people with 30 days in jail if they don’t pay the parking fee? Is that even allowable under the law?
Those should all be blacked out now. Did you get one that didn’t have that language blacked out?
No, I haven’t parked in the ramps lately.
There was a gentleman who brought that to our attention. That was actually interesting to me because I’ve been parking in the ramps on and off, but I never noticed that.
But this guy brings it to our attention, and I’m like, oh, my gosh, that’s terrible. I mean, talk about terrible customer service. If you don’t pay we are going to throw you in jail? First of all, no, we are not going to throw you in jail. I don’t even know the statute that they are even referring to there. I think it’s just ridiculous. I don’t know when that started or who approved that verbiage. But on all the envelopes that’s been blacked out now.
I talked to an attorney here in town, and I told him about that. I wish I could remember what he said exactly, but something about how the Parking Authority could have been guilty of extortion or something like that for threatening a criminal offense for a civil debt.
The management company does an impeccable job within certain aspects of it, but I know that customer service maybe is not as good as it – OK maybe it’s not that great. I don’t personally have a lot of bad things to say about their customer service, but I have people who tell me about things that have happened in the parking ramps that are just like, you have to be kidding me. So it’s definitely something we are going to have to work on and make known and speak about, so hopefully we’ll be a kinder, gentler Parking Authority in the near future.
-Matt Bunk is publisher of the Great Plains Examiner.
This entry was posted in Bismarck News, NEWS CATEGORIES, People, Slideshow and tagged Bismarck Parking Authority, Dina Baird, downtown Bismarck, Ondine Baird, parking, parking fees, parking ramps. Bookmark the permalink.
I’m astonished at the number of people that refuse to walk a block to get to the business they want to frequent. In any large city, you’ll pay a minimum of $20 just to drive into a ramp, which is usually the only place to park other than metered street parking. The only reason the ramps in Bismarck are empty is that people here are lazy. People here don’t realize how good we have it at $1 and hour and $6 a day like the ramp on 3rd and Main. Park there and you’re a two minute walk from most businesses.
Another ramp downtown? Really? What is that solving aside of cleansing the city the city of historically significant buildings? Visit cities of a similar size with a strong urban core and count the parking ramps. If you see more than one, they are likely along the fringes. Part of the quirk of any downtown or any urban business district is obviously walking more than 50 feet to the entrance of a business. The main concern in my view is traffic and pedestrian safety. There is plenty of parking available West of 3rd St. (and usually 4th St.). However crossing 3rd St. on foot assumes that the drivers of this town are aware of pedestrians.