Green Building Tour: Green Building Surfaces

City-Built Parking Garages Are Almost an Essential Service in Omaha, Neb.

Omaha World-Herald (Omaha, NE) April 14, 2002 Byline: John Taylor Apr. 14–You won’t find many parking garages on a list of architectural wonders of the world, particularly those built by the City of Omaha.

But what the drab, gray pillbox-like structures lack esthetically, they have made up for in the economic lift they are giving downtown Omaha, public and private officials say.

Most of the estimated 32,600 people who migrate into the downtown area day and night to work will be arriving by car, not bus. They, along with the more than 5,600 people who live in the downtown area, have to find some place to park.

That estimate of workers and residents in downtown Omaha was made in January 2000 by the Metropolitan Area Planning Agency.

Increasingly the parking spaces for those commuters and residents have been provided by the City of Omaha in the form of huge, new garages with more than 3,382 parking spaces in an area bounded by Leavenworth, Cass, 24th and Eighth Streets.

Since the city got into the parking-garage business in 1980, it has built seven in the downtown area, and has started work on an eighth, this one the biggest of them all, a 1,300-stall garage near the new Union Pacific Corp. headquarters. go to site city of omaha

Actually, the city owns only seven of the garages. In 1984, in a complex trade of property, it turned over to the State of Nebraska the five-story, 450-car garage on 14th Street, between Harney and Howard Streets.

The city isn’t the sole owner of all downtown parking garages. There are also 17 privately owned garages with 6,117 spaces, according to MAPA.

But counting the latest project, which will include a tunnel to the new U.P. headquarters at 14th and Dodge Streets, the city-built garages represent a public investment of more than $55 million.

And they’re well worth the spending, boosters of the city-owned garages say.

In fact, had it been left to private companies, that number of spaces probably wouldn’t have been built, one official said. Too costly is the guess of Greg Peterson, assistant director of the City Planning Department.

Marc Nichols, president of Downtown Omaha Inc., agreed: “Here’s what I hear developers say: ‘It is very difficult to get a parking garage profitable because you don’t have the 24-hour-a-day usage.” In the eyes of some, then, city-built parking garages have become almost an essential public service, like filling potholes and mowing park grass.

“I never thought of it that way,” Nichols said, “but that could be a way you could look at it.” If the parking weren’t available, he said, “because of our current culture it would be very difficult to attract corporations and business to locate downtown.” The culture, Nichols said, has to do with Omahans’ attitude toward transportation.

“In the Midwest,” he said, “we’re car people. That’s a hard thing to change. People want to be able to park close to wherever their destination is, work or entertainment.” The City of Omaha has helped satisfy that expectation, but providing those close-in parking spots has come with a cost. Taxpayers, at least temporarily, help pay for the structures.

The garages have been financed mainly through tax-exempt revenue bonds. The bonds are paid off through revenue generated when the city leases space to businesses or to individuals.

When income from parking falls short of covering expenses and debt service, bondholders are paid from city general funds, which are derived from taxes.

Stan Timm, city finance director, has estimated that the city will spend nearly $750,000 more than it takes in this year from the parking garages.

The idea of the city’s being in the parking garage business is relatively new. Until the 1980s, providing off-street parking was a job for private enterprise.

The Omaha Downtown Parking Association, a private corporation, was created in 1954 to build, operate or lease parking facilities downtown. Four years later it claimed credit for increasing the number of off-street parking spaces by more than 4,400. In 1968, the organization was reorganized into Downtown Omaha Inc., to take up broader downtown issues.

In 1980, with help from a state law and contributions from private foundations and companies, the city began planning a garage as part of the Central Park Plaza project. That work involved construction of two office buildings bounded by Douglas, Farnam, 15th and 16th Streets.

The city would finance its portion of the garage costs — $5.2 million — with a $1.9 million revenue bond issue and $3.3 million in tax increment bonds, the first time that type of financing was used by Omaha.

With tax increment financing, a public improvement is paid for with the sale of bonds. The principal and interest on the bonds is paid off with increased property tax receipts from the improved private property.

Another $1.35 million to build the garage was pledged by The World-Herald Foundation, Peter Kiewit Foundation and the Hawkins Charitable Trust.

That public-private partnership has been the impetus for most of the garage projects, said Peterson, of the City Planning Department.

He cited these examples:

OmahaPark Three, a three-level, 227-stall garage at 900 Farnam St., built by the city for $1.2 million. The city agreed to build the garage next to the Greenhouse building so the building could be redeveloped into apartments. The two lowest levels are for tenants. The upper level is for the public.

OmahaPark Four, a two-level, 434-stall garage at 10th and Jackson Streets, serves two demands: It gives residents of the Old Market a place to park and the city an opportunity to provide public stalls to visitors to the area.

The garage was built with part of the funds from the same $8.475 million bond issue that also was used for OmahaPark Five, a 454-stall garage constructed in conjunction with renovation of the Civic Auditorium.

Peterson said the garage that will be built for the Union Pacific headquarters — at 13th and Dodge Streets — is still another example of a public-private partnership.

“The City of Omaha has long believed that the central business district is the heart and soul of the city,” he said. “Parking garages are expensive to build, and that is a way the city can participate to have companies construct major office buildings . . . that are critically important to the overall success and viability of downtown.” Would Union Pacific have built the garage and tunnel if the city had not?

“I don’t think anybody knows the answer to that, since we didn’t have to go there,” said John Bromley, a U.P. spokesman. “We looked at it as part of the total package the city and state offered us — tax incentives and parking.” To James Monahan, a former Omaha city councilman and president of a company that owns 10 downtown parking lots, the answer is obvious. “Why should you (build a parking garage) when you can get the city to do it?” he said.

“But the city can probably afford it. It probably does help the businesses because they get a parking garage they don’t have to put their money into, and they can put it into something else.” As the number of parking spaces increases, however, the number of people riding buses — many to downtown destinations — continues to decline.

Although Monahan is one of those who believes the proliferation of parking lots and garages has undermined public transportation, an official with Metropolitan Area Transit, operator of the city’s buses, takes a more benign view. in our site city of omaha

“I don’t know that we’ve ever been able to draw any kind of direct correlation between (the growth of parking garages and ridership),” said Curt Simon, senior director of operations.

Other economic factors, such as cheap gasoline and reasonable parking rates, also have to be considered, he said.

“It’s still an easy town to get around in your car,” Simon said. “Those are tough things to compete with, so I wouldn’t say parking garages in and of themselves are anything that we’ve really able to pinpoint as a major detractor.” Garages or not, ridership on MAT buses declined to 3.8 million people last year from 4.3 million in 2000.

MAT has come up with a strategy, to be put into operation this summer, that officials hope will boost ridership, particularly within the downtown area.

Last year MAT outlined a plan to begin using circulator buses to move within neighborhoods and within the downtown area. The idea would be for buses, stopping at frequent intervals, to provide transportation to people going to lunch, to their cars or to some other destination in downtown.

While MAT ridership might be helped by serving people already in the downtown area, no one seems to believe that large numbers of commuters will abandon their cars and daily trips downtown for bus transportation.

Although no recent surveys have been done comparing parking supply and parking demand, officials like Monahan believe there are ample spaces available.

Indeed, the 2000 MAPA survey found there were 17,804 parking spaces in private, city, state and public lots, garages and underground facilities in the area bounded by Leavenworth, Cass, 24th and Eighth Streets. That’s enough parking to accommodate the entire population of Papillion.

OmahaPark Eight, the lot connected to the U.P. project, is the only one the city is currently actively involved with, but it probably won’t be the last.

“As long as (people) have that automobile and they need to get to work, and their office is downtown,” said Peterson, “I think it’s important that the city work with those businesses to provide a place for employees to park that’s close and competitive, to keep (businesses) from going to the suburbs.”