What’s the old saying: “The more things change in Kirkland, the more parking stays the same?”
Simply put, downtown parking is an issue today, yesterday — maybe always. Just in the last eight months: A survey conducted by the Kirkland Parking Advisory Board late last year found most city motorists viewed the downtown parking situation as “very difficult, crowded and user unfriendly.” A community-wide survey/city performance audit conducted in February showed the downtown parking situation to be one of City Hall’s biggest perceived failings among Kirkland residents. And a survey currently being conducted by the city seeks to discover why people park downtown, how long they stay and how much they’d be willing to pay for a spot. Early guesstimates by this columnist predict it will report that people want to park here more often, stay longer and pay less. (The survey is available online now through July 31 at www.ci.kirkland.wa.us/parkingsurvey.htm.)
We’ve got parking issues.
So what’s new?
A quick glance through headlines from archived issues of the East Side Journal finds Kirklanders have complained about parking about as often as Henry Ford rolled Model Ts off the production line — and we started about the same time, too. On July 8, 1926, the Journal proclaimed on its front page: “First they smiled at parking law; now it is serious business.” From May 18, 1933: “Council tightens regulations for town parking.” From April 18, 1935: “Parking puzzle to be solved next Monday at Council.” And from Dec. 8, 1955: “Off-street parking for multiple housing units urged by Gardner.”
In fact (starting with four in 1926 alone), more than 230 headlines from 1926 to 1974 mentioned a parking related issue.
Which got me thinking: How bad could parking have been in the 1930s, really? Car ownership during the Great Depression was a fraction of what it is today, and the city was a shadow of its current size. Maybe the truth isn’t that Kirkland has some inherent problem with parking. Perhaps it’s that parking is like eating out: It only takes one bad experience to ruin a restaurant forever (and newspapers love to write reviews).
Certainly, the current parking situation in Kirkland is less than ideal. Recent city statistics show downtown spots are 95 to 100 percent full during peak hours at lunch and from 6 to 9 p.m. That’s about 10 percent higher than the “rule in the parking world,” says Tami White, Kirkland’s parking coordinator. But she also said part of the issue is people’s insistence on finding the perfect spot. The downtown’s periphery is a veritable treasure trove of unused residential-street parking.
“The problem is people want to park right next to where they want to be. If you’re willing to walk a little, you’ll have no problem,” she says.
By way of example, she says she “never” receives complaints about parking availability when the city hosts downtown events that bring in thousands, such as the July 4 parade or the recent Kirkland Uncorked weekend festival. It seems people attending those events don’t expect to get the perfect spot, and they park — or walk — accordingly.
With the city’s Parking Advisory Board currently discussing options for building a new parking garage in Kirkland, the question is, therefore: Should the city spend millions on a parking garage during this time of budget cuts and rising gas prices? The dichotomy between the city’s professed commitment to “green” and financially backing a structure dedicated to cars should also be considered.
Perhaps it is true that to be in downtown Kirkland is to be caught in parking purgatory — destined to make seemingly never-ending laps around Park Lane. Maybe something must be done. Or perhaps it’s our perspective that should find a new place to park.
