Study reveals no need for Kalispell parking garage

A parking structure may be on the wish list of the new Kalispell Downtown Urban Renewal Plan, but Senior Planner Jarod Nygren said there is currently no justification for a parking garage.

“We have to fully utilize what we have before we even think about a structure,” he said.

Nygren was in charge of the city Planning Office’s parking utilization study in 2015. Department members checked the status of parking spaces on every block, every hour of each business day during the busy months of August and September.

“What we found is there’s always on-street parking available, pretty much 100 percent of the time, within two blocks or 600 feet of every business,” Nygren said.

But when it comes to parking, he said, a negative impression can have more influence than reality. He regularly hears businesses express concerns about locating downtown because they fear a perceived lack of parking will keep customers away.

Austin Baumgarten, manager of Montana Coffee Traders on Main Street, was aware of the trepidation surrounding downtown parking when his restaurant moved from Center Street to its current site in 2017.

“It seemed to be more of a problem because of the fear of how bad it was going to be,” he said. “A lot of people worried about parking. But people haven’t said much about it at all since we opened.”

Business has increased in its new location, Baumgarten said, exactly as the company had hoped.

“But how many people do pass us by because they can’t find a parking spot? We don’t know,” he said.

Baumgarten said Coffee Traders has the benefit of being close to First Street East and its many diagonal spaces. It is also helped by being the first business to open on the block each day.

“Most businesses don’t open until 10 downtown, so we have the whole street from 7 to 9:30,” he said.

Brix Bottleshop on Main Street is another Kalispell business that saw downtown as a greener pasture, moving from the nearby Loading Dock building in 2016.

Owner Karen Sanderson, who is also on the Kalispell Business Improvement District board, said she’s heard few parking-related complaints from customers. Brix has a five-space parking lot for customers on the alley behind the store, but on-street parking isn’t a huge issue from her vantage point.

“I look out my window and I see five spots,” she said. “I know it’s in January, but there’s usually something all year. I look forward to Kalispell growing commercially where we do have a real parking problem.”

Even if Brix customers haven’t expressed concern about parking downtown, Sanderson said she understands the frustrations of drivers who can’t find a spot in a hurry or are fighting to parallel park amid the congestion on Main Street.

“I think the biggest issue is the speed of the traffic,” she said. “They’re zipping down the street, especially in the summer. I’ve seen people trying to parallel park and someone will drive by and flip them off for slowing down traffic on Main Street. I want to say ‘come on, it’s a small town, let them park.’”

To alleviate parking frustrations, Nygren urges downtown visitors and employees to change their point of view and their parking habits. He’s found that some drivers have a resistance to walking a few blocks downtown, though they’re willing to cross the expanse of a box-store lot.

“When you go to Walmart, if you walk from the back of the parking lot, it’s probably more than 600 feet away,” Nygren said.

Head west of Main Street, and the search for a spot is bound to be successful, he said. The concentration of parked cars tends to be heavier east of Main Street and on-street parallel spots are almost always available on the west-side streets just a block or two off Main, he said.

The parking lot between Third and Fourth streets behind the VFW building seems to be a well-kept secret, though the lot offers 50 free parking spots with no two-hour restriction. Nygren said it is rarely, if ever, full.

Kalispell is pursuing low-cost ways of adding parking spots. Over the last few years the city has removed the two-hour parking limit on streets such as Second Avenue West, and a plan proposed at the Jan. 28 City Council work session calls for the creation of 80 new downtown parking spaces through repainting, fixing curb cuts and more angled parking.

For example, on Third Street East between Second and Third avenues, plans are to add eight diagonal spots and lift two-hour restrictions.

“We’ve found a way to add 80 spaces downtown without spending hardly any money,” Nygren said. “It would cost $1.6 million for 80 spaces in a parking structure.”

Lifting the two-hour designation on some spots will hopefully alleviate some of the burden on downtown employees, who can face the headache of moving their vehicles every two hours to avoid tickets.

Kalispell Downtown Association coordinator Pam Carbonari said creating more all-day spots for workers will benefit everyone, and free up some of the most sought-after spots for downtown customers, she said.

Matt Brake has worked at Rocky Mountain Outfitter on Main Street for 19 years and he’s on the city’s parking advisory commission. Like Carbonari, he sees employee parking as the biggest challenge, with downtown workers moving their car every two hours.

Rocky Mountain Outfitter has three employee parking slots behind the store and the staff works out plans for the rest of the drivers.

“Two people have to park outside of the business district,” Brake said. “We really value spots for our customers and we can’t have our people moving every two hours. We need them working.”

Permit lots solve some of the problems with employee parking, Nygren said, but they are underutilized. Even lots with 100 percent of their spaces sold are often partially filled, so the city has begun to oversell permits on some of them.

“We’re starting at 10 percent, then incrementally going up until we start to hit that peak,” Nygren said. “Our goal is to fully utilize these spots.”

Nygren wants to clarify that rumors of diagonal parking on Main Street are not part of the new downtown plan.

“A lot of people, when they saw the downtown plan, assumed we would be putting diagonal parking on Main Street, but we don’t have enough right of way,” he said.

One of the stated goals for Main Street that will help with parking is to allow left turns onto all side streets. This could smooth out some of the block-circling drivers are forced into when there are no spaces available.

“One of our biggest issues with Main Street is that you can’t always make a left turn,” Nygren said. “When you’re a tourist especially, you can get stuck in the gauntlet, and have to go all the way through town to make your way back around. A left-turn lane would help a lot.”

Main Street also suffers from, as Carbonari called it, “sign blight.” From an aesthetic point of view, she believes there are too many signs on each block and the signs are confusing and misleading.

“A lot of them are old and faded, and also the signage doesn’t clarify the true hours that parking is enforced,” she said. “There’s no enforcement after 5 o’clock and the signs say 6. We also don’t have enforcement on Saturdays.

“The signs should truly mark what’s downtown so they’re not deterring people. We want people to come downtown and feel free to get a bite to eat, go shopping and take a look at our beautiful architecture, not have to concern themselves over a parking spot.”

Reporter Heidi Gaiser may be reached at 758-4438 or hgaiser@dailyinterlake.com.