Bend panel holds open house on downtown parking

It’s no secret that finding parking in downtown Bend, even outside of peak hours, can be like finding a needle in a haystack.

One Bend resident of 21 years sees it trending in the wrong direction.

“The parking situation has gotten worse,” she said Thursday. “There’s been a lot more visitors and a lot more people living here, so it has been difficult.”

But the Downtown Stakeholder Advisory Committee has a plan to free up space. The idea, with details laid out at a community open house, is to focus on consumers.

“It’s a customer-first strategy,” committee member Douglas Watson said. “So the primary focus of downtown is to give our customers and our visitors easy access to our businesses.”

The committee collected parking data from two separate times of the year. Surprisingly, summer was only 12 percent busier than spring.

But the main takeaway is that on the edges of downtown, there’s a lot more green to take advantage of. That’s where they want downtown employees to park.

“If we can move them to the edges, or not right in the downtown core where everybody else wants to be, then we can free up some of those spaces for more customers,” parking consultant Owen Ronchelli said.

It’s a strategy they hope businesses will take and run with.

“You put a little sticker in the window saying we’re a customer first business,” Ronchelli said. “I think it’s also kind of a friendly thing for folks to see when they come in and say, ‘Oh, can you tell me a little about this program?’ And they say, ‘Well, we want to make sure that the best and most convenient parking spaces are reserved for you as our customer.'”

Find out more about the committee’s plan on its website: http://www.bendoregon.gov/government/departments/growth-management/parking-study/downtown-stakeholder-advisory-committee