A minor miracle happened on a Friday at 3 p.m. on North San Francisco Street, smack in the middle of downtown Flagstaff. Resident Jen Lewis found a primo parking spot across the street from the Seasoned Kitchen and The Rendezvous Coffee House and Martini Bar.
“I usually just park up the hill and walk, but I got lucky,” said Lewis, who came downtown with her son, Ian Whisman. “This is where we want to be.”
For some, parking is not really a problem. For others, Flagstaff’s downtown parking issue brings to mind bigger challenges and opportunities – a chance to take more of a view from 10,000 feet.
“We have to provide a little something extra,” said Old Town Shops owner John VanLandingham, who has helped spearhead planning efforts and groups working on downtown issues for years. “Is that little something extra being able to park conveniently? We don’t have the parking that we’d like, we don’t have the parking our customers would like – demand generally exceeds supply most days and nights.”
But VanLandingham and others are also focused on the bigger issues affecting how anyone – a business owner, a tourist or a local – experiences downtown. He said one of the main issues is that there is a lack of overall coordination of logistics like deliveries to local restaurants, setting up for downtown events, keeping litter picked up, snow removal and, yes, parking.
“There is room for improvement,” said VanLandingham of the parking issue. “But our frequent visitors – our locals – find their ways around it. We have a fit, bicycle-friendly community.”
Aude Stang, local architect, residential designer and sustainable consultant echoed that idea but adds a different perspective based on her philosophy and the fact that she is from France. Stang has operated her Architectural Design Studio for years downtown with offices on North Leroux Street and more recently on North San Francisco Street.
“If you are willing to walk a block, you can always find a parking spot,” said Stang, noting though, that parking can be “annoying” when you have a lot of things to carry, say, to an office. “I’ve never thought that parking in downtown is an issue. If you go with the attitude that you’ll find something, you’ll always find something – I’ve never had an issue. I used to live in Paris for maybe 10 years on and off. It’s not like trying to park in Paris – parking there is an issue.”
For residents and visitors, another downtown parking area that parallels these themes is the eight-spot parking lot between Leroux and San Francisco streets. This lot provides additional handicapped parking and easy access to the lively, colorful shops and restaurants of Gateway Plaza. It is either a nightmare or very easy to park there depending upon one’s timing and, well, parking karma or attitude.
“We always seem to have a spot back here whenever we come,” said Percilla Stoeckly, who comes downtown regularly with her daughter.
But during the holidays, there are other considerations when it comes to parking downtown.
“Weather is the real potential fly in the ointment,” said VanLandingham, noting that with the calendar this year there are only four Saturday shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas and the result is that makes each Saturday even more important. “Holidays are our busiest time of year in retail and weekend holidays are by far our busiest time. I cross my fingers that we don’t get three feet of snow on a Friday night.”
As they say in real estate: location, location, location. In downtown Flagstaff, having a storefront just a block off the frequently busy and at times over-subscribed parking spaces adjacent to Heritage Square is a help. “I’m in an easier parking area, it’s easier to find a parking spot on Birch than it is on some of the other streets,” said Chief Fizzicist Eilise Fisher of Fizzy Bella Bath Boutique on Birch Street between North San Francisco and North Agassiz. She noted, though, “As a business owner it’s really difficult. I pay for a parking space in the building next door. It’s very hard to move the car every two hours when you’re tending the store.”
So which way this year’s downtown holiday parking will go remains to be seen. Will it be sweet like kisses under the mistletoe or more Grinch-like with two-foot-tall slush drifts at the curb? In Flagstaff, parking also is a microcosm of a bigger issue about the quality of the experience downtown, and that visitor experience also has seen an evolution in the improvements the downtown offers its residents, visitors from the Valley and travelers from around the world. There are opportunities for improvement and ongoing work with many stakeholders to get together and craft real, working solutions to the overall quality of the Flagstaff downtown experience, including the parking.
“Ten to 15 years ago, the number of restaurants were half or less than we have now,” said VanLandingham, who is also celebrating 10 years with Bigfoot Barbeque in the basement of his Old Town Shops. In that time, “The intensity of the usage has changed tremendously; it has to have doubled. In a sense, we’re a victim of our own successes; people want to be a part of downtown.” FBN
By Steele Wotkyns
Flagstaff Business News