Blame it on progress and boom times.
Downtown parking-lot fees are climbing as office-occupancy rates soar and new construction takes up space once occupied by parking lots.
The downtown vacancy rate dropped from around 11.9 percent in 2005 to 9.3 percent in 2006, according to commercial real estate broker Cushman & Wakefield.
Even as office space is filling up, new buildings are replacing cracked asphalt parking lots.
In Denver’s central business district – an area roughly bounded by Colfax Avenue, Wewatta Street, Speer Boulevard, Grant and 20th streets – 13 new buildings have gone up since 2000, including the Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center.
Six more are under construction, and 15 are in the planning stage.
A lot at Lawrence and 14th streets, for instance, is expected to disappear later this year when construction begins on the 45-story Four Seasons Hotel & Residences.
As a consequence, the monthly price for space in many downtown lots has climbed between $10 and $15 in the past few months, said John Conway, branch manager for Ampco System Parking in Denver. Daily rates rose about $2 in the past few weeks, he said.
The new increases follow a 10.6 percent bump in average hourly rates and 5.8 percent nudge in daily rates that were documented in a study of downtown parking availability last year.
“Whenever you see the occupancy rates of office buildings rise, you can bet that the (parking) rates will rise. On top of that you have all these lots that have disappeared, and that has an impact as well,” Conway said.
Ampco has about 65 lots, the bulk of them downtown. Ruiz Parking Management followed the lead of bigger companies in raising prices at its two downtown lots, said Hernan Ruiz, the company’s president.
He boosted the monthly price for lots at 16th Avenue and Lincoln Street and at 15th and Champa streets from $150 a month to $160 a month. His daily price went from $10 to $12 maximum before dropping to $11 when his business declined in response to the increase.
“People were complaining about the price, and about the price of gas,” he said.
Ruiz has to raise his prices when competitors do, he said. If he doesn’t, bargain-seeking monthly parkers will fill his lots and keep out short-stay motorists who pay $3 per half-hour and those charged a daily fee. “I make a little more money if I have turnover,” he said.
“The lots disappearing pulls the price up because there are less spaces in the area. You need to charge more because everybody parks in the cheaper lot and you lose money,” Ruiz said.
Tameka Jackson, 29, a financial adviser, has been parking at Ruiz’s lot on 16th and Lincoln since she moved to Green Valley Ranch from outside New Orleans in November. When Jackson, who generally arrives at work at 6:45 a.m., started parking at the lot the price for those arriving before 8 a.m. was “eight or nine dollars,” Jackson said.
It is now $10. “In Louisiana we would never be paying $10,” she said.
Jackson takes a bus about once a week, and would use it regularly if it wasn’t so often late, she said.
If parking goes to $12, she said, she will hunt for another route where buses are more dependable. “Even if I had to drive to another bus route, especially with gas going up, I would do it.”
Lot prices will continue climbing as new buildings are constructed, Conway said. And northeast downtown – a broken rectangle bordered by 20th Street, Park Avenue West, East 20th Avenue and Tremont Place and Blake Street – is starting to bloom.
The area, which is dominated by low-cost parking lots, is ripe for development, said Ken Schroeppel, an urban planner with Matrix Design Group and creator of urban blog DenverInfill.com.
“The cost of parking will probably go up as the amount of surface parking goes down,” Schroeppel said. “But as projects are completed they will have underground, or structure, parking for at a minimum the people who use the building.”
A recent Downtown Denver Partnership inventory of parking lots found a net gain of 101 spaces since June 2006. But many commuters, who won’t be able to park in places like the newly constructed James Merrick State Parking Facility, where the 660 spots are reserved for state employees, won’t find the gain much help.
The inconvenience is a byproduct of improvements to Denver’s downtown, Schroeppel said.
“As downtown continues to become a better place, it is natural that it will cost more. You get what you pay for. If you go to a downtown where it costs $2 to park all day and have another downtown where it costs $20 to park, that should be a more interesting and vibrant place to go.”
Staff writer Tom McGhee can be reached at 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com.
$10-$15
Increase in the monthly price for space in many downtown parking lots in the past few months
$2
Increase in the daily rate in recent weeks
