(Disclosure: Summit Land Management is a Rose Law Group-related company and contracted with the firm.)
By Paul Basha, Kayla Amado | Rose Law Group Reporter
Why are three-hour parking signs so predominant? Is that duration scientifically based? Is it better than any other duration?
As with most traffic situations, particularly parking, it’s merely a compromise. A duration everyone could accept, though some wanted shorter and others longer. Nothing scientifically based. Not data-driven.
Time-restricted parking became necessary when parking meters vanished. When we all had to pay by the minute to park, we made certain those minutes were few.
Remember pennies, nickels, and dimes? Once upon a time, those coins were necessary to park in most medium and large cities in the country. Eventually they became quarters, and now paid parking is primarily card-driven.
While revenue was part of the motivation for parking meters, the primary purpose was to ensure people left their parking space quickly so other people could use the parking space. Maximize retail shoppers. Buy many expensive things and leave.
Remember when the Biltmore Fashion Park tried tokens? In the past, their parking areas, both north and south of the stores, were available for free for everybody – as they are currently, except for the valet-only parking areas. For a time, perhaps 15 years ago, ending perhaps a year or two ago, to park at Biltmore Fashion Park, you needed to pass through gates. For at least some of those years, when you went into a store or restaurant, they gave you tokens. Then when you retrieved your car, and drove to exit through the gates, you had to put the tokens into a device so the gate would open so you could drive through it.
And I thought some of my past ideas were really bad.
Scottsdale removed coin-operated parking in the early 1980’s. Everyone was delighted! Shoppers, diners, employees, all. No one needed to carry coins or worry about time expiring and getting a ticket. People could park free all day … And they did.
Also in the early 1980’s, the business district, between Camelback Road and Indian School Road, and between Scottsdale Road and Miller Road, had a number of small longstanding businesses. Many of these owners wanted to enlarge their buildings, though couldn’t because the newer parking codes required more parking than they could provide on their property. So, the City Council committed that the City would provide on-street parking for selected locations. And businesses enlarged the buildings without providing parking. This was called P-2 and P-3 zoning. While this was a great idea to encourage redevelopment of small businesses, it ensured there would be inadequate parking in this vital one-quarter-mile area.
Redevelopment throughout greater Old Town Scottsdale occurred in the 1980’s and 1990’s. With the absence of parking meters to encourage parking turnover by limiting parking duration, there was inadequate parking; particularly in the more popular areas. Shop, business, and restaurant owners required their employees to park in front of other shops, businesses, and restaurants; so that parking spaces were available in front of their business. How could that not be a good idea? Instantly, competition became quite unfriendly and unruly.
So, in the late 1980’s; shop owners demanded parking restriction signs. There was a plethora of time limits: 10-minute, 20-minute, 1-hour, 2-hour, 3-hour.
Some parking areas required permit stickers. Cars without permits were ticketed.
The police had a very difficult time enforcing the different rules in different parts of Old Town Scottsdale. Through an experimental process, trying different time limits for several weeks; three-hour parking became the rule almost all shop, business, and restaurant owners and the police thought was best. So virtually all other time restriction signs were removed, with only three-hour parking left standing.
All was rather calm and quiet with parking in Old Town Scottsdale for a decade or so. Even the Galleria opening in 1987 southeast of the Scottsdale / Camelback intersection caused no parking problems. The Galleria had its own private seven-story below-ground and above-ground parking structure. The Scottsdale Galleria failed miserably for a variety of reasons, and closed in 2001. Still no parking problems.
As development ensued in greater Old Town Scottsdale, with the ubiquitous 3-hour on-street public parking time limit, demand for more parking increased.
When the City constructed the Loloma Multimodal Transit Center at Marshall Way and Second Street, in the mid-1990’s, it included an oversized parking area to supplement the existing City-owned parking area west of Scottsdale Artist School (aka Loloma School).
When the City completely renovated Scottsdale Stadium, at Drinkwater and Osborn, spring training home of the San Francisco Giants, in 1991 and 1992, it included a free three-story parking structure.
In the mid-2000’s, a surface parking area west of Scottsdale Road, between 3rd Avenue and 5th Avenue, was converted by the City to a three-story free parking structure.
When the City constructed Museum of the West at Marshall Way and First Avenue in the mid 2010’s, their underground parking area was over-sized to provide free local public parking.
Then, in the early 2010’s, the Galleria reinvented itself as a multi-tenant call center. It became a very high-employee-density operation. These people became a parking problem. Suddenly, the small businesses, shops, and restaurants east and south of the Galleria had no place for their employees and clients to park.
You may ask, how did the large Galleria parking structure built for numerous high-end retail shoppers not have enough parking spaces for office employees? Rumor has it that the Galleria owners charged their call center employees to park in the Galleria parking structure. So, they didn’t.
The police resumed strict enforcement of three-hour parking. (Incidentally, the three-hour parking enforcement officer worked four 10-hour shifts. It became widely known that this officer did not work on Wednesdays, so Wednesdays became consequence-free all-day parking. Shocked people when he changed his day off to Tuesday. Some called it Wealthy Wednesday.)
The call center employees responded by taking turns collecting numerous car keys from their colleagues, and every 2.9 hours moved their parked cars from one three-hour parking space to another three-hour parking space.
In the late 2010’s, the City of Scottsdale developed a permit parking system that allowed longstanding businesses to park in on-street three-hour parking spaces for more than three hours. That solved the parking problem created in the early 1980’s by the City Council when they solved the private businesses inability to expand due to inadequate property size to provide parking.
In 2015, the City of Scottsdale conducted a greater Old Town Parking Inventory and Use count. This effort counted every occupied parking space in greater Old Town Scottsdale every hour. The result revealed that numerous parking spaces existed throughout Old Town, though many parking spaces were not where people wanted to park.
The City responded by hiring a company to conduct an experiment with a vacant parking space locating app. They installed devices in each of several hundred parking spaces near the Galleria Call Center. People could open the app and find the closest available parking space. It functioned quite well … until the Galleria Call Centers ended their leases with the Galleria and relocated – many to the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community where former farmland provided acres of space for parking. Suddenly, vacant parking spaces were abundant in Old Town, and no one needed an app to find open parking spaces. So, the experiment ended without spreading to the entire greater Old Town Scottsdale.
Now, greater Old Town Scottsdale has again become more popular for shops, restaurants, and businesses. And once again, greater Old Town Scottsdale has numerous available parking spaces, though not where people want to park.
Scottsdale has responded by authorizing two new parking structures. One is currently in construction adding two new levels to an existing two-level structure in the northwest corner of Brown Avenue and Second Street. This parking should be available at the end of 2027. Construction is scheduled to begin this fall at the other location, on a single-level parking area between Stetson Drive and 6th Avenue, east of Wells Fargo Avenue.
Curious about something traffic? Call or e-mail Paul at (480) 505-3931 and pbasha@summitlandmgmt.com.
