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Today's ER editorial takes the Friends of Bidwell Park to task for vexatious litigation, which is only sensible. I don't want to step all over Lon's streetcorner, but the thought occurred to me that maybe we need a bumper sticker for the rest of us.
It's that time again, when thousands of dollars flow back into Downtown Chico, attached, howbeit temporarily, to new and returning students at Chico State.
The student population is an economic shot in the arm for downtown merchants, food and beverage (especially beverage) operators, and service providers. The retail mix downtown certainly reflects a synergy (or co-dependency, according to how you look at it) between the commercial corridor and the academy. Not that the relationship is always congenial, but students depend on the downtown as much as downtown depends on the student body. Having a thriving shopping district immediately adjacent to the campus certainly enhances the academic experience.
And it must be said that the spirit of inquiry and quest for knowledge informs the cultural dimension of the downtown, as well. The gathering places, from the city plaza to the coffeehouses, from the taverns to the tabernacles, are infused with energy and participation from the migratory population of exuberant youth.
So while we anticipate the usual grumbling from the townies about the "invasion" of rampant undergrads, it's important to remember that the downtown bread is buttered with student cash. Fortunately, the city center is in pretty good shape for the return of the transients. The empty storefronts are bustling with rehabilitation activity. Fleet Feet is moving into the old Confetti location, a Mediterranean restaurant and grocery is occupying the old Moxies space, and I'm given to understand that a ladies' ready-to-wear retailer is taking over the old Herreid's Music site.
Kudos, incidentally, to Chico Velo bicycle club for hiring North Valley Renovations (whom I hailed in an earlier posting) to pressure wash the bulbed out areas at the busiest intersection in downtown. Ed McLaughlin and I don't agree about much, but we're both disappointed in the sorry state of the sidewalks. Credit due for putting money where his mouth is. Thanks.
Last night the Old Crow Medicine Show took the roof off the Paradise Performing Arts Center. Steve Schuman of North Valley Productions is to be commended for bringing these guys to town and, notwithstanding some logistical latency in processing the many will call orders, putting on a great show.
These guys are some kind of string band demons. They bring a phenomenal energy to their show, and you can't help but get jacked up by them. They are clearly very well rehearsed and prepared, and still love what they do. That's a hard combination to sustain, but I think the depth of their preparation is one of the reasons they can love doing it, because it's the only way to get it done the way these guys do it.
And the audience obviously loved them doing it. From the second song the front of the theater was packed with dancers. It was not a sophisticated step; it was mostly jumping up and down and flailing while shouting "wahoo".
The lady in the next seat asked me if I was a "fan of bluegrass", which puzzled me. While these guys play traditional string instruments like banjos and fiddles and dobros, they don't play bluegrass as such. This is a far older and yet recently updated folk music form. It's kind of like "country" music before it got bolted onto "western" and became a radio format ruled by Nashville. It's the sort of music neighbors would play together on the porch in rural communities on a Saturday evening because the only way they were going to get to hear any was if they made their own. A lot of OCMS' music is original, but is faithfully derived from a traditional convention.
None of these guys are going to win any awards for instrumental virtuosity. Indeed, they were all playing, to one degree or another, a stringed version of a drum. All of them played primarily rhythm figures, and when you've got five guys playing the beat, it's impressive in itself that they are as synched up as they are.
Their signature sound is their singing. They sing in close, stressed harmonies, with a "high lonesome" sound typically associated with hill country. What these guys do that is so impressive is the way they animate their performances to such a frenetic degree.
I was reminded of two other groups from the past. In a lot of ways, they resemble the Kingston Trio back in their heyday. The Kingston Trio's instrumentation varied, but was based around an upright bass, guitar, and banjo combination. And while the OCMS guys changed instruments almost as often as Brittany Spears changes costumes, all their tunes included this same fundamental rhythm section. Old Crow also leaned heavily on fiddle, harmonica, and dobro, as well, but these were the coloratura voices; the main engine was bass/guitar/banjo. The vocal ensemble in OCMS is a trio, as well. Go back and listen to Kingston Trio recordings of "Ain't It Hard", "Greenback Dollar", "New York Girls", "Little Maggie", "Shady Grove/Lonesome Traveler", and you'll hear strong similarities to the Old Crow repertoire.
The other act I was reminded of was The Band. Each of the members of Old Crow seemed to resemble in some way the members of The Band. The fiddle player reminded me very much of Levon Helm, while the other principal vocalist and guitarist was strikingly similar to Robbie Robertson. The third singer and dobro/banjo player had the sturdy build, gravitas, and hirsute demeanor of Garth Hudson, while the 6-string banjo player was as low-key and understated in expression as Richard Manuel. It's true that the only thing the remaining player had in common with Rick Danko was the bass, but hey, close enough for Americana, sezaxon.
One thing I found interesting was the 6-string banjo player. This is an unusual instrument; it uses guitar tuning over a banjo skin, and the chord voicings are different from typical 5-string frailing banjo progressions. And it's the one instrument that is played by the same musician on every single tune they do. The player doesn't sing, takes no solos, and is fairly unremarkable in terms of stage presence, but it can be argued that he's the core foundation of their instrumental identity. There's always a 5-string being played, and always a guitar, so his contribution might be considered redundant. In fact, I believe that he's their "secret sauce"; take him out of the mix, and it doesn't sound like Old Crow.
One last note; these guys are every bit as enjoyable on record as they are live. Their live presence is amazing in its dynamic energy, but you'll be up and dancing to the CDs as well.
Throughout the "Greater Downtown" series I've been publishing here for the past two months, I've tried to examine the city center as a whole system, with a specific vision for its future. I've explored best practices in other successful communities, the pedestrian environment and walkability, public transit, the sorry state of the sidewalks, access and circulation, the farmer's markets, vacancy issues, a whimsical suggestion of a downtown "How long has THAT been there?"
ballpark, and some of the local heroes who help to make downtown the jewel that it is.
But today we're going to talk about the single most critical factor in sustaining the progress we've made in recent years, and realizing a vision of a city center that is vital, dynamic, and successful for all stakeholders. Yes, my friends, we're going to talk about parking.
I know some of you are already glazing over at the mere mention of temporary automobile storage, and I understand why. It is a subject that has been shrouded almost exclusively in emotionalism. The topic is so polarized that most discussions about it quickly devolve into a rapid exchange of slogans and ad hominems. And I think part of the problem is that the question is nearly always posed as a quantitative analysis. The two "ends" of the debate (if an argument that is at once circular and endless can be said to have ends) can be reduced to "we need more parking" and "we have plenty of parking". Both are true. Both are false. Let's turn this thing around and look at it another way.
As I said in an earlier post, I'm prepared to concede the argument that we have "plenty" of parking, subject to two stipulations; it's in the wrong places, and it's in the wrong hands. Accdording to the results of the now infamous March 2006 charrette, 46% of the over 4000 parking spaces in the total downtown are in private lots. In their analysis of parking supply and demand, the charrette facilitators did not break out the private lots from the municipal lots and on-street parking. This is a flawed analysis, in my judgment, inasmuch as private lots are criminally undersubscribed. Take a walk around the downtown on any busy weekday, and you'll see that most private parking lots are always nearly empty. Bank parking lots, in particular, while serving a fairly high churn rate, nevertheless, are usually only about half-filled at any particular time.
Thus, when the charrette folks analyzed parking demand in the two blocks bounded by 2nd, 3rd, Salem and Main Streets, they calculated 85% occupancy (and thus ideal), notwithstanding that over 25% of the parking in that area is on private lots, and is undersubscribed. The idea that "85% is typically considered the optimal balance between making efficient use of the supply and making it easy to find a space" is based on there being a space or two available on street in each block face. But if 25% of the parking analyzed is in private hands, then the 15% of "available" parking is in fact unavailable, and those open spaces on street are largely mythical.
The charrette analysis goes on to claim that occupancy in "Sub Area 1" (bounded by 1st, 3rd, Salem and Flume streets) is only 71%, but again, fails to take into account that 25% of the spaces in that district are in private hands, so the actual availability of on-street parking spaces is significantly lower than 29%, as anyone who's tried to find a convenient on-street parking during the day will attest.
It has been argued that if people were willing to walk "a few blocks" they could find plenty of open spaces, which may be true, but that's irrelevant. I am not arguing that patrons can't find parking, but that the current parking supply is not suited to the very large number of employees and business owners that must park for extended periods of time.
Again, the whole discussion bogs down on the false analysis of quantity. Quantity is not the problem. 4000 parking spaces probably is a sufficient number of spaces. The problem is in the market model, and in the pricing.
Some private spaces are not available at any price. Unless you have business with the bank, you cannot park in their lots. And in recent years, most banking services are delivered online, so the demand for parking at the bricks-and-mortar bank branches is significantly reduced. Their lots are more than half-empty all day, radiating heat, and offering bleak streetscapes to adjacent pedestrians.
Other privately operated lots offer leased spaces (as does the city on its municipal lots) to individuals' exclusive use. This is terribly inefficient, inasmuch as even those who use their spaces all day every weekday leave them empty on evenings and weekends. As we've seen, the demand for parking is acute at those times, as well.
At symposium on innovative parking strategies held July 25 in Sacrmaneto, three key reforms were identified by several presenters. They are:
These recommendations, among others, were included in the charrette results, and city staff were directed by the city council to develop naplan to implement these strategies. One important recommendation was to extend parking meter enforcement on evenings and weekends. On Tuesday, the Internal Affairs committee will entertain discussion of this recommendation.
I very much favor meter enforcement extension, subject to some stipulations. The first being that resulting revenues be specifically earmarked for improving parking availability in the downtown. Again, I'm not talking about quantity of parking spaces, but rather the quality of parking in the central core. I think that since every parked car represents an ambulatory pedestrian, some of this revenue could be used to improve the pedestrian evironment and walkability of the city center. And some of this revenue might be well invested in better wayfinding signage and other mechanisms to direct motorists to available parking. But the bulk of this revenue should be utilized to increase the availability of parking, through effective management strategies, recovery of private parking space for public use, and to invest in technologies to improve parking payment and collection.
For example, there are "pay stations" in use in other ciommunities that allow payment with credit and debit cards, and even new technologies that enable people to pay with their cell phones. No need to travel with a bag of quarters. Programmable meters that make it possible to implement variable pricing based on demand are an effective mechanism to encourage long-term parking in low-demand areas, freeing up spaces in high-demand corridors for patrons.
There is a counterargument that requiring evening and weekend patrons to pay for their parking will hurt businesses downtown. This is a fallacy, as numerous successful downtown revitalization efforts from San Diego to Seattle will attest. Restaurateurs, in particular, are concerned that patrons being required to jump up from the table to feed a meter or risk a $15 ticket will lose them customers. In fact, extending enforcement into their prime time will not hurt their business, it will hurt Outback's, Logan's, Chili's, and Olive Garden's.
Parking in the downtown between 6 and 10 PM is just as dense as during the day. And for the same reason; employees and business owners are using those close-in spaces, such that potential customers searching for parking become discouraged and go out to the pattern restaurants around town with acres of available parking. By enforcing meters in the evening, with variable demand-based pricing, some number of employees will park further out, freeing up those spaces for patrons.
Patrons who are facing the prospect of spending $50+ per seat for a fine dining experience don't mind paying a buck or two for parking. What they mind is not finding parking convenient to their destination. Extended meter enforcement helps to solve that problem, increasing business.