Study: Plenty of options to improve parking on Water Street

By Jeremy Twitchell

Wednesday, June 10, 2009 | 4:43 p.m.

The $137,000 study the Henderson City Council commissioned last year to come up with ways to meet parking needs in downtown’s Water Street District has been completed.

Consultants at Kimley-Horn and Associates came up with eight short-term suggestions to help the city maximize its current parking infrastructure and five long-term efforts to undertake to accommodate future development.

“We were thrilled with the final product,” Henderson Redevelopment Manager Michelle Romero said. “They gave us some really great strategies to look at and some innovative solutions.”

When redevelopment efforts along Water Street were moving along, parking was gradually becoming a concern as the number and size of buildings increased and began to stress the area’s limited parking availability.

The parking garage that recently opened as part of the Justice Facility expansion is expected to provide some relief, but city officials say it will not be enough to meet the long-term needs of the type of development they have in mind. And the garage is a few blocks away from the area of Water Street and Lake Mead Parkway, where parking is tightest.

The economic slowdown and the resulting lull in development, including along Water Street, has reduced the urgency of the situation. However, one of the projects that has stalled is the City Center mixed-use tower planned for southeast corner of Lake Mead Parkway and Water Street. Part of that project is an oversized parking garage that will allow neighboring businesses to lease stalls to meet their parking requirements.

That project has been indefinitely delayed, taking that garage off the table, at least for a few years. But with the slowdown affecting the entire area, Romero said, it won’t be needed for some time.

Short term, the parking master plan suggests designated park-and-ride lots, a shade structure on the top level of the City Hall parking structure to maximize its use, the use of uniform parking signs throughout the district to clear up parking confusion, stricter on-site parking requirements for businesses in certain areas. The plan also calls for the designation of a city employee as parking manager, a parking committee comprised of city employees, residents and business owners, as well as an annual parking report and improved planning for special events.

Romero said the Water Street District has adequate parking at present, and while there are no immediate plans to incorporate the master plan’s suggestions, the plan will better enable the city to meet increased demand when development resumes.

“As things start to develop, whatever develops first, that will decide which way we go,” Romero said. “Right now, we’re in a very good place.”

Long term, the plan suggests that the city consider adopting additional development fees on new businesses in Water Street to help fund the construction and maintenance of parking facilities, remove the planter islands that stick out into the roadway along Water Street to maximize on-street parking availability, construct additional parking structures, continue its policy of complaint-based parking enforcement and extend Texas Avenue north from Army Street to Victory Road in order to improve traffic circulation.

Kimley-Horn also gave the city a software program that will allow city planners to plug in information about a proposed project and get a carefully calculated estimate of how much parking it would require. The program can be used by all city departments for projects throughout the city, Romero said.

“We want to stay on top and in front of issues,” she said. “This will help us do exactly that.”