Uptown Parking Garage Fallout

By, Mark TenBroek

Sedona, AZ — On May 14, 2024 the City Council approved the construction price and gave initial direction on financing for a new Uptown Parking Garage on Forest Road.  The discussion on the Parking Garage took over the majority of the 6 hour Council meeting that had some interesting ebbs and flows.  At the end of the day, the $23M construction cost, $25M if you include the property purchase, results in a cost of $92,500 for each of the 270 parking spaces.

A few residents spoke in opposition to moving forward with the new structure for a variety of reasons, but the Uptown Business community came out in full force to speak in favor of the new structure and wrote many emails to Council that called for the approval of the facility.  Most stated that more parking is absolutely needed in Uptown and that employee parking is desperately needed for their workers.  Clearly the business community has substantial influence on the Council.

It needs to be remembered that in early 2023 the City’s sole source traffic consultant Kimley-Horn (K-M) performed a parking analysis that inventoried and measured the occupancy of all public and private parking in Uptown during the 2023 Spring Break peak period.  This analysis along with a projection of increased parking needs pinned to continuing growth in visitation to Sedona showed that at the current rate of growth the parking requirements in Uptown would reach the magical 85% parking full benchmark during peak times in a couple of years.  Past analysis has shown that if you reach 85% full, more parking space is needed to prevent excessive visitors hunting for a parking space.

Other parking related studies over the past 20 years had noted that Uptown should have an analysis of the employee parking needs along with a review of how parking occupancy varied throughout the year.  Unfortunately the 2023 parking restudy did not tackle these two issues as was suggested by a number of residents.

So when the K-M parking study counted cars during the peak Spring Break period in 2023, it was not determined how many of the cars counted were visitor cars or employee cars or how long they occupied the parking spaces.  A missed opportunity to address employee parking needs.

Council Direction

In November of 2023 the City Council had a long discussion of the results of the K-H parking study and gave direction to staff to obtain a Guaranteed Maximum Price (GMP) from their Construction Manager at Risk (CMAR) contractor.  At least 5 members of the Council included the proviso that staff should, prior to expecting an approval of the GMP, also develop a plan for employee parking, employ guidance technology in conjunction with the Parking Garage, finalize a plan for consolidation of existing public parking and restriction of non-resident parking on residential streets, and develop a financial plan for funding the Parking Garage on a user fee basis.

At the May 2024 meeting, City Staff said that they had not moved forward with these prerequisite items because they did not have available staff to perform these assignments and that they expected the new Parking Coordinator to perform this work once hired and on staff.  In other words, the GMP approval request was adjusted to “build the garage and we will figure out the rest of this later”.  The request for these other items was apparently set aside by staff.

What is the Parking Garage For?

The reasons for a new Uptown Parking Garage have had different reasons presented over time.  At one time or another it has been suggested that the garage was needed for the increasing numbers of visitors coming to Uptown, parking for Uptown employees, a location to consolidate parking to reduce visitor wandering looking for parking spaces in Uptown, and as a location to park prior to using transit to move to other locations in town.

At the end of the day, more available and accessible parking was hoped to improve the access to businesses located along the 89A Uptown corridor.  It is well known that the parking on 89A is normally highly utilized throughout the year and the remaining free private and public parking provides additional locations for visitors to access those businesses during peak visitation periods.

Uptown Parking Enterprise

What has become clear from the City Council direction is that the Uptown Parking Garage, and more than likely all of Uptown Public Parking, will soon be operated as an enterprise.  As an enterprise this means that the costs of the program, which includes the construction costs of the garage, any leased lots, a parking monitoring and guidance system, and enforcement costs will all be paid through parking fees and parking ticket fees.  On an annual basis, no general funds will be used going forward to support the public parking system as it needs to be self supporting or parking rates will need to be adjusted to support these costs.

Some members of Council stated that they believed that the Parking Garage itself needs to be paid for entirely by parking fees generated at the facility.  An initial estimate of the needed parking fees for the garage were $2.5/hour, which was included in a footnote in the financial analysis provided to Council in the agenda package without further assumptions provided for this rate.  To pay for the construction and debt service fees, this would require that each space in the Parking Garage is occupied about 7 hours a day, every day of the year.  Time will tell if this level of occupancy can be achieved at this location.

It is also of note that if an employee decides to park in the garage and pays this fee, it would likely result in a cost of $400/month (40 hours/week * 4 weeks/month *  $2.5/hour) to that employee.  It remains to be seen if Uptown employees will be able to or want to absorb these costs to work in Uptown.  Will Uptown businesses be willing to pay these for their employees, or will they request that reduced rates be provided to their employees?  Stay tuned.

Other members of Council believe that the entire parking system, which includes the 89A roadside parking, the current municipal parking lot on Schnebly, and all available street parking will be fee based.  Some of these street locations along Jordan Road are currently in the process of having parking fee kiosks installed for this use.  Operating as an enterprise, all these spaces could be used to generate parking fees to pay for the overall parking system.

How is Public Parking Operating Now

Data on the operation of the existing parking on 89A is shown in the graph below for the past 2 years.  This shows that public parking has generated about $500,000 a year in parking fees, or about $44,000 per month for all spaces, or about $530/month for each parking space.  Since parking fees increase above $2/hour for longer stays ($4/hour for the fourth hour and $6/hour after that), this results in an average of about 9 hours/day of use for these parking spaces.

Driving through Uptown on 89A during most days, these spaces  seem to be occupied most of the time given their convenience. These spaces are valuable since they allow the customers to quickly access the businesses and be on their way.

A second piece of parking revenues includes parking ticket fines for overdue parking and other parking violations.  The following graph shows the monthly parking tickets written for each month for the past 2 years.  It is not known what percentage of these fines are collected.

The two dashed lines show parking violations in two private lots used for public parking, the Sacajawea lot that is part of Sacajawea Plaza with its small shops and the Matterhorn behind that lodging establishment.  These lots have time limits that make enforcement easier.  The Matterhorn lots yield about $2,600 a month in parking tickets and the Sacajawea lot has generated about $500 a month in parking tickets.

From the graph it can be seen that parking tickets along 89A have been increasing over the past two years, and have averaged about $3,100 a month while other parking violations in Uptown have yielded about $4,100 a month.  It is notable that enforcement for the two areas managed by the City of Sedona have dramatically increased over the past 6 months.  It is not known if this is a result of more violations, or because of increased enforcement in the Uptown area.

It is notable that while no information was forthcoming in the agenda package for the City Council meeting on a funding plan, it was noted at the meeting that a financial model had been quickly assembled using the occupancy data from the 89A parking system to estimate what type of occupancy could be expected in the larger Uptown parking system.  Unfortunately, no real data exists on the expected occupancy year round that could be used to understand the expected revenue from the overall public parking system.  It also seems that the 89A parking occupancy might be optimistic for parking in the other more remotely located parking lots and the new Parking Garage.

While it has not been established, it is likely that these parking fees will need to be variable throughout the year with the highest rates charged during peak visitation periods and potentially higher rates during peak use times of the day.

Parking Consolidation Impacts

Another component of the Uptown Parking Garage is that once completed the City plans to consolidate public parking.  Public parking currently includes 7 existing private lots, two of which are leased to the city at a rate of about $150/space/year.  This is substantially less than the construction cost of the Parking Garage Spaces at $92,500 each.  The 54 spaces in the Jordan lot are also expected to be converted to a multi-family housing project in the near future further reducing the inventory.

Once the Uptown Parking Garage is complete and the City releases these lots to their owners, it should reduce the inventory of public parking spaces in Uptown from 725 spaces to 662 spaces, which includes the 270 new Parking Garage spaces.

It was noted at the Council meeting that if the land being used for the Parking Garage was to be used as a surface lot it would only generate 70-80 parking spaces and would cost $2.5M, or about $36,000 per space, to accomplish that.  This seems suspect since the three level Parking Garage, which includes a police substation, bathrooms, and an elevator still averages 90 spaces per level (270/3).  Removing those elements from a surface lot on this property would more likely yield at least 100 spaces.  Since the Parking Garage parcels have already been leveled for use on the Forest Road project, minimal site work should be required.  So, using a higher end cost for asphalt paving of about $5/square foot, this would yield a total cost about $265,000 to cover these two parcels entirely, or a total cost of about $2,650 per space.

The City is also considering changing some or all of the 178 “unmanaged” and currently free public spaces on the City streets such as Jordan, Forest, Van Duren, Wilson, and Smith to either Paid parking or converting some of them to “resident permit” parking only, further reducing the inventory of free public parking in Uptown.  This process is already underway on Jordan Road with new parking kiosks being added along with signage.  Some of these spaces may also be made No Parking to improve circulation on these narrow streets and improve safety for pedestrians.

Employee Parking Plan

The biggest gap in Uptown Parking’s knowledge base is understanding the need for and use of employee parking.  The only study that addressed this was the WP Moore Study in 2019 that did a limited survey of Uptown employees.  It found that almost all employees choose to drive to work and very few carpooled or used transit.  This should be expected since many live in areas not well served by transit, or they have other jobs that they need to come from or go to in a reasonable time.  Or it may be that they live in their car, as demonstrated by the number of requests for a Safe Place to Park.

To help cover this gap, SedonaResidentsUnite.com did an employer survey in 2023 that showed that there are 154 businesses in Uptown that included 10 lodging and 19 restaurant businesses.  More detail is needed on the number of employees for each of these different businesses, but we do know that one of these 19 restaurants has 65 employees and all of them drive.

It is also not understood how many employees are parking in Uptown during peak periods, but it is clear that there are likely hundreds of employee cars that need parking accommodations that were included in the spaces counted by the K-H study.  Clearly the management of how these employees come to work and where they park, especially during peak visitation periods, is critical to making the available public spaces more available to visitors.

Conclusion and Take Home Messages

So where does this leave us?  The business community lobbied hard to get the Parking Garage moved forward.  Their focus seemed to be, in part, to provide more parking for their employees.  It may also be to accommodate more customers for their businesses.

We heard for example that Pink Jeeps want more spaces for their customers to park in Uptown while taking a tour on their vehicles.  While to some it seems odd to draw customers to a limited parking area like Uptown to start a tour, Pink Jeeps is not the only tour operator to do this. Some have suggested that a better plan might be to have these customers park elsewhere and start tours out of the most congested part of Sedona.

It does not appear from business comments during the Council meeting that they were aware that after the Parking Garage is built, there will likely be fewer public spaces available for employee and customer use.  They may also not be aware that these public spaces will all be fee based to pay for the Parking Garage and likely other improvements and maintenance costs for the Uptown parking system.

A question for these businesses is whether they are willing to pay for those public spaces so that their employees have a place to park, or are they expecting that the parking enterprise will provide employees with reduced rates or even for free.  To some this approach might be seen as a form of corporate welfare.

There is also the question of what happens to the existing leased parking lots that currently provide 335 public spaces.  Will the property owners turn those into paid parking for visitors and employees and compete with public parking? This may provide more available spaces in Uptown, but since many of these spaces are closer to the business corridor, could this reduce occupancy in the paid Public Parking?

We understand that the Pinon Pointe shops are planning to move in this direction of making their parking for customers only.  If many different rates are charged, will this result in confused visitors hunting for more economical or closer parking spaces and circulate throughout Uptown to get the location that fits their needs?

It is also possible that these released parking lots will be redeveloped as new businesses that draw more customers to Uptown, exacerbating the need for parking.  It was stated by one Councilor that their hope was that these lots will be redeveloped as multi-family housing in Uptown.  This may be a good use of these properties and reduce the need for employee parking, but it may also be a requirement that these units would need additional parking just for those rental units.

Clearly, during the year or two before the Parking Garage is finished, more information on the employee parking needs must be collected, and better data on occupancy needs must be generated.  The current budget includes a placeholder for a parking management and wayfinding system that should be a top priority for the new Parking Coordinator.  This could be used to initially gather data on occupancy for the existing parking spaces and could also help to guide visitors to available parking either with active signage or through the use of an app.

It appears that there are lots of questions that need to be figured out in the next couple of years.  It’s like the age old question: “Now that the dog has caught the car, what now?”

Editor’s Note:

Mark is a retired Professional Civil Engineer who graduated from the University of Michigan in 1977 and worked as a consulting and design engineer in the Midwest for over 40 years.  He worked primarily on Water and Wastewater projects for municipalities and utilities.  Mark and his spouse arrived in Sedona in 2017 to design and build a home in Uptown where they now live. He understands Sedona’s unique place as both a sacred and spiritual center. Researching how the local economy can be effectively managed to protect our quality of life, the natural world, the tourist experience, and reasonable profits for local businesses, has become his passion.