City Defines future parking areas

By Meg Olson

The city of Blaine is putting together a group of stakeholders to look at parking for the central business district, and gathering the data they need to determine where and when downtown Blaine will need more parking.

In a preliminary survey of parking space available, city public works director Steve Banham said there were a total of 1,368 parking spaces available in Blaine’s central business district, including on-street and public off-street parking, private customer parking, and employee parking. A preliminary parking analysis by city staff indicated the area would need 1,409 parking spaces, excluding parking for employees and undefined square footage, which includes public buildings like city hall and the post office, gas stations, and the train station.

"This is just to kind of whet your appetite,” said Banham. He asked city council at their July 25 meeting for approval of a parking committee to start looking at more detailed parking data, eventually leading to a parking plan for downtown and developing alternatives to fund it.

“I think it’s likely when we get down to how do we provide the parking that is required it will be done through a parking district or some other public/private partnership,” said city manager Gary Tomsic. “We need the partners to be on this committee.”
Council approved the formation of the committee and Tomsic said staff would come back with more information about committee membership and funding for the parking study.