Ramp up Fargo’s downtown parking

The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead
Parking, forever the bane of people who shop, recreate or work downtown, is a growing concern in Fargo, where a committee is studying a raft of ideas for a new ramp. The possibilities are dizzying, but this much is clear: Adding ramp parking spaces won’t be cheap.
Most of the concepts unveiled recently for consideration range in a cost spectrum from about $10 million to as high as $19.1 million. The larger ramps would add around 500 to 600 or more spaces, at a cost per space of roughly $20,000 to $30,000.
At first blush, those are sobering numbers to contemplate. But they should be seen in context, beginning with the dire need for parking slots, evident to anyone who has repeatedly circled the block to find a space. The shortage is most acute in north downtown, where a study three years ago identified a need for about 550 more parking spaces.
At City Hall, the first inclination is to view parking ramps strictly as a cost burden. But they’re hardly a money pit. In 2013, the most recent city budget figures archived online, three municipal parking ramps and eight lots - projects supported by revenue bonds - generated revenues of almost $1.3 million and incurred expenses of $540,165, yielding net revenues of $742,471. That surplus accrued from $1 hourly fees and monthly passes ranging from $50 to $65.
The idea that parking ramps actually can be a profit center takes on an even brighter sheen when other factors, less easy to quantify, are taken into consideration. The most obvious are the additional jobs, retail outlets and entertainment venues that would be enabled - created? - by solving the parking crunch.
Ramps’ multiple levels make efficient use of space. That’s readily apparent from city parking figures, which show the three downtown ramps supported by revenue bonds -Island Park, Radisson Hotel and the Ground Transportation Center - together have 812 spaces, while the eight lots have 842 spaces.
Less obvious, but also important, is that city taxpayers are well served when the city grows up rather than out through continued sprawl. By more intensively developing downtown, to accommodate additional apartments or condominiums as well as shops and offices, the city doesn’t have to build more miles of streets or water and sewer lines.
Over the past 10 years, as the city has pushed to the south, the city’s miles of paved streets have increased from 347 to 407 and the miles of water mains have increased from 394 to 460, each an increase of about 17 percent for infrastructure that is expensive to build and to maintain.
Parking ramps aren’t nearly so expensive when you start tallying up the diverse benefits. Once Fargo solves its downtown parking crunch, the already impressive renaissance of the once blighted city core will really flourish.