The first draft of a study on downtown St. Charles’ parking has found that there are open spaces even during peak hours, but that limited signage prevents visitors from finding the open spots.
The city currently manages three parking garages, 20 surface parking lots and on-street parking, according to the St. Charles Downtown Parking Study. Despite two of the garages and 10 of the lots often being at capacity during peak hours, the study found that nearby lots are lower than capacity at the same times.
“There’s available parking. It may not be a visitor’s first or even their second option, but there is parking kind of on the peripheral of the downtown,” said Derek Conley, the city’s director of economic development. “We do need to implement some solutions just so that people can find those parking spaces.”
St. Charles City Council contracted with Desman, a national consulting firm specializing in parking, to do the study in June. Conley said the city wanted to know if parking was an issue downtown and what could be done to improve the situation for visitors after a “tremendous amount of development in the downtown over the past five years.”
Public input has been an important part of the planning process, officials said. Desman has incorporated feedback from an online survey and two open house public meetings, one in August and one in September, but is now asking for additional feedback about a draft of the study it released in January.
One meeting about the draft was held on Jan. 23, but Conley said another will take place in February because city staff members were worried many were unable to make the January meeting.
“We were actually only originally planning on having a third one, however, that was when it stormed, and we felt that people weren’t going to come out for that one, so we wanted to have a fourth one to give people that option,” he said.
The fourth open house public meeting will be at St. Charles City Hall on Feb. 12 from 5–6:30 p.m. Residents can show up at any time during the open house to review the draft and give their feedback to city staff and the consultant team.
Those who wish to read and comment on the draft may also go to the city’s website: www.stcharlesil.gov/projects/downtown-parking-study
After the draft has been revised using public comments, the plan will go before the City Council. Even if the council accepts the study, it does not bind the city into doing any of the recommendations, according to Conley.
“It just kind of gives staff, City Council and the city as a whole direction on how we can improve the parking experience,” he said.
In total, the study’s draft lists 12 recommendations on how to improve parking. Some are actions that can be taken within the next year, while others are long-term plans that involve working with other organizations in the community, Conley said.
He said things like updating signage and other wayfinding improvements are “low-hanging fruit” that can easily be accomplished. This could make a major difference in the visitor parking experience, because the study shows that highly-used lots are near under-used lots.
“The data shows that even in the worst-case scenario, there is both on- and off-street parking available,” the study’s draft says. “Wherever and whenever there is a high-occupancy facility, there is always a lower-occupancy facility nearby. However, this second and third parking option is not always readily apparent to visitors or is inconvenient from a pedestrian standpoint if you have to cross a barrier such as Route 64.”
In another recommendation, the study says the city should consider partnering with businesses and organizations with large parking lots, such as the library, to make them available for free public parking outside of normal business hours. This would provide a boost of additional parking spaces during the hours when downtown lots are the most full, such as Saturday evenings.
Other recommendations include reducing the number of time limit categories to simplify parking, adding digital parking signs to multistory parking garages, installing parking meters in high-use on-street parking areas, designating pick-up and drop-off spots for the elderly and disabled, adding electric charging stations, running a downtown trolley during peak hours and more.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
