The Great Midtown Parking Debate / Identity Crisis Continues

When planning significant street changes to one of Reno's most popular and dense neighborhoods, who are the primary stakeholders that should influence it? The public that frequents the neighborhood? The business owners? The residents. RTC Washoe's public meeting on proposed changes to Virginia Street left more questions than answers.

The History

On June 26 2007, the Reno City Council adopted the South Virginia TOD (Transit-Oriented-Development) Corridor, amended more recently in 2012 and 2013. The purpose of doing this was to intensify development along this corridor, which extends from Liberty past Midtown down to the convention center near Atlantis, and includes about a 1/4 mile in either direction east and west of Virginia Street. The general, high level goals of a transit corridor are:

1. Offer a mix-up of land uses that almost force a higher-level density of development. For example, if for some strange reason you wanted to build a single family home on Virginia Street in this corridor on a mid-sized property you just bought, you'd be out of luck. There are minimum residential unit requirements on this Transit Corridor level, which is 14 dwelling units per acre.

2. Promote more pedestrian activity and less auto-oriented transit, through a mixture of walkable sidewalks, bike lanes, and mass transit improvements.

Here's the South Virginia TOD explanation, direct from the plan:

Establishing a mixture of land uses within a TOD corridor allows individuals to meet their day-to-day needs by using transit and/or by walking to their home, place of work or other services.  The mix of land use will facilitate in creating a diverse and vital neighborhood environment, increasing transit use, and pedestrian activity.  Higher density development is one of the key components necessary to create compact, vibrant transit-oriented development neighborhoods.  TOD corridors encourage pedestrian activity, support retail businesses, and promote transit usage.  Buildings should be placed so that they are oriented to transit
and pedestrians.  No parking should be allowed in the front of buildings, it should be located in the rear, side, inside or underground of buildings.

Reno is not alone in developing TOD corridors...cities including Los Angeles, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland and San Francisco have all adopted this concept.

And indeed soon after the TOD was adopted, RTC came out with plans that aligned South Virginia Street with the plan the council adopted. It was a multi-phase mass transit system that would begin with a Bus Rapid Transit system and conclude with street-cars and light-rails. You can read about the plan here, I covered it in detail in 2009.

Part of that plan was to build RAPID transit stations would could eventually be converted to light-rail stations. Those were built, and they are beautiful, artsy stations along Virginia Street and Center Street. This plan called for the eventual elimination of all street parking along Virginia Street so it could be reconfigured first for dedicated RAPID bus lanes, and then eventually for light rail. This encouraged and followed the 'no parking should be allowed in the front of buildings' mantra mentioned above.

The Current

Between 2009 when BRT was launched and now, Midtown has organically grown into one of Reno's most sought-after neighborhoods. Through the grassroots efforts of people like Jessica Troy-Scheider and Bernie Carter, and developers like Kelly Haberae who were way ahead of their time, Midtown has grown into what it is today, an eclectic collection of nearly all locally-owned small businesses. Pioneers like Sup, Midtown Eats, Junkie Clothing that stuck it out through the rocky beginnings of this neighborhood are now reaping the rewards, and with those rewards, also experiencing a new problem previously foreign to this neighborhood: parking.

Parking parking parking. The subject dominated city-led discussions and meetings surrounding the process of turning Midtown into an official neighborhood. In many ways, Midtown businesses and residents were revolting against the South Virginia TOD's long term plans, and instead wanted small mom-and-shop businesses and smaller residential developments to compose Midtown, instead of mega-dense residential and larger commercial projects. A debate subsequently ensued about parking.

Midtown businesses were pretty adamant parking was the biggest priority for them, and losing any parking at all, including street parking along Virginia Street, would be devastating. Given that "lack of parking" was a common statement among Yelp reviews and suggestions for dining in the fiesty Reno Foodies group on Facebook, perhaps those businesses are correct in their thinking. 

So, in a surprise move, RTC has backed off their original plans for Virginia Street, and is now circulating a plan for Midtown that looks more like Holcomb Avenue and Wells Avenue, sans the landscaped medians and bike lanes.

Last night, over 100 people attended RTC's fist public meeting on their plans for both South Virginia Street in Midtown, and North Virginia Street to the University, mainly extending RAPID service to UNR and building nice stations.

It was the plan in Midtown that most people attended the meeting for. Though I couldn't attend, a Change.org campaign has surfaced claiming the plan doesn't go far enough, and this blog is stating it's all kinds of wrong.

Here is a side-cut view of the plan for the narrowest portion of Virgnia Street through Midtown:

In defience in almost every way of the seemingly-useless South Virginia TOD, the businesses in Midtown retain their front-side street parking, and there are no bike lines or dedicated rapid transit lanes, though there are wider sidewalks which will be a huge relief.

What did the old, TOD corridor configuration look like? More like this. Still no bike lanes, but also no street parking.

According to Reno architect, blogger and good friend Mike McGonagle, bike enthusiasts were out in force at the meeting, wondering why there are no bike lanes for South Virginia Street included in the plans.

Bike lanes would be nice, but where would they fit into the above configuration without sacrificing at least one lane of street parking? Well, some bloggers and the Great Streets Coalition have some great ideas below on how this could be accomplished.

Using Google Earth and roughly counting, Midtown would lose about 80 'dedicated, marked' parking spots on Virginia Street between Liberty and Center Street/Mary, where parking morphs from designated parking to traditional parallel street parking. During lunch rush in Midtown, there is truly little-to-no parking on Virginia Street and its connecting side streets like Thoma, Forest, St. Lawrence, Tahoe Street etc. One time a client of mine had to walk four blocks to meet me at a Midtown restaurant. Not a big deal to me growing up in Los Angeles, but to the client it was the end of the world.

And that brings me to a critical question...is Reno ready for the mentality of thinking that involves not always getting to park directly in front of the business you want to visit? If you listen to the business owners in Midtown and read some of the Yelp reviews which often include statements like "So-and-So restaurant is awesome! Just avoid it during lunch hour because you won't find parking," the answer would be, parking is the most critical component of developing out Midtown's future.

On the flip side though, a survey done by RTC Washoe shows more parking is the least of people's concern regarding Midtown. The Good Little City blog has a great piece on what could be a better lane configuration than what RCT is proposing. Check it out here.

Blogger Reno Rambler came up with an impressive configuration of his own, shown below. It eliminates turn-lanes, which could be questionably dangerous, but the configuration overall is much more pedestrian-friendly.

Now that RTC Washoe is much, much closer to being able to complete this project , stakeholders have become more vocal about what's important to them on Midtown's "Main Street". Should the northern portion of the South Virginia TOD be eliminated altogether? Should some of South Virginia Street's parking be eliminated to accommodate bike lanes? Should turn lanes be eliminated to accommodate sidewalks larger than six feet on Virginia Street's narrower sections? Should there be room for landscaping?

What are your thoughts? Is parking truly critical to the businesses of Midtown, as they state, or is it more of a myth, and their businesses would survive if a lane of parking was sacrificed for bike lanes, landscaping, sidewalk amenities or all of the above?

Would a plan like the Great Street Coalition actually work? I am leaning heavily toward that, and not what the RTC proposed.

Thoughts?

There's another meeting tonight you can voice your opinion at:

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15

5 to 7 p.m. with a brief presentation at 5:30 p.m.
served by RTC SIERRA SPIRIT and RTC RIDE route 7
University of Nevada, Reno, Raggio Building, room 4001
1664 North Virginia Street
Reno, NV 89503

Want to read more about RTC's current plans:

Street Cross-Sections

Corridor Study