New attractions, more housing and a few additional office tenants promise to boost occupancy at parking facilities. Higher demand, plus the glitz of a new casino on Public Square, already are pushing rates up in some parts of a downtown that has grown comfortable with cheap parking.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- To an urban casino, a new convention center and other Cleveland projects, add one more downtown development: It won't be as easy, or affordable, to find parking next door to your destination.
In a downtown replete with parking -- 56,000 or so spaces -- major operators aren't predicting a shortage.
Still, new attractions, more housing and a few additional office tenants promise to boost occupancy at parking facilities. Higher demand, plus the glitz of a new casino on Public Square, already are pushing rates up in some parts of a downtown that has grown comfortable with cheap parking.
The challenge, parking experts and city advocates say, will be reaching visitors, whether local or from out of town, to let them know where to park, to manage overflow traffic and to promote public transportation and other ways to get to, and navigate, downtown.
Busier garages and higher rates irk consumers. Yet they're indicators that a market is thriving. City officials say a parking crunch would be a good problem, one that would demonstrate Cleveland's vitality and, eventually, spur additional downtown development.
That doesn't resonate with office workers like Miranda Egri, who recently found out that her early-bird parking rate will jump from $7.50 to $9 a day on Tuesday. The 28-year-old Boston native thought she was getting a deal on cheap parking at Frankfort Avenue and West Third Street. Now she and her co-workers in Key Tower are watching parking fill up, and rates start to creep higher, around the casino and the Cleveland medical mart and convention center site.
"We're all being displaced, and the lots we do find are extremely expensive," said Egri, who handles billing and collections at the Squire Sanders law firm and lives in University Circle. "I'm trying to explore -- maybe there are other garages that the city owns. I may look into the bus. I don't really want to do that."
The last in-depth study of downtown parking, produced in 2004, found 56,400 spaces -- 4,600 of them considered to be excess spaces, based on traffic between the peak hours of 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. on weekdays, according to consultant Desman Associates. Most of that surplus was on the fringes, along the lake, in the Flats and at the southern edge of the Gateway district.
Since then, parking lots off East 12th Street have become a development site for condominiums. Surface parking near the Cuyahoga River turned into the 32-acre site for the Flats East Bank neighborhood. And Cleveland State University remade its campus, with new academic buildings, housing and garages.
Nobody has produced a follow-up study.
A Plain Dealer review of city licenses and interviews with large parking operators indicates that the total supply of parking hasn't changed dramatically in the last eight years. Meanwhile, demand has been soft. Office tenants cut jobs, and parking commitments, during the recession.
The median daily parking rate at a garage in downtown Cleveland was $8.50 in 2011, according to the annual Colliers International study of parking in central business districts. The national median was $16.12 - nearly twice as much. Depending on the area, parking at downtown Cleveland surface lots is available for as little as $2 a day -- or $15 to $20 for a special event.
"There's probably a bigger oversupply of parking now than there was in 2004," said Mark Muglich, president of Ampco System Parking, which runs roughly 100 facilities in the city. "The rates, overall, in downtown Cleveland are probably lower than they were in 2004. . . . There's just not a parking problem in downtown Cleveland."
Builders, office workers compete for spaces
Craig Purnell pays $3.25 a day to park next to the Cleveland Grays Armory, a short walk from his office on East Ninth Street.
With AmTrust Financial Services Inc., a New York-based insurer, moving 1,000 jobs to the district and several apartment projects planned, Purnell worries that parking will become harder to find, and pricier.
"I really think that parking is going to become more of a premium in the months to come, over the next year or so," said Purnell, who commutes from Akron to work as a database administrator for the Baker Hostetler law firm. "In the past six to eight months, I've really seen a lot more traffic and a lot more people than I have in the past."
Parking is the quintessential supply-and-demand business. When the market is sluggish, as it has been for years in Cleveland, garages are empty and rates drop. As demand rises, though, parking owners have the ability to charge patrons more.
"If all of this stuff comes together, and we don't have any issues with downtown parking, that will be a real disappointment," said Jeff Appelbaum, a Thompson Hine attorney who is representing Cuyahoga County on the $465 million medical mart and convention center project. "It's almost a sign of success if we have parking challenges."
The convention center construction wiped out 500 parking spaces, for a project that includes no new garage. Tourism officials expect most convention traffic to arrive by taxi or public transportation or to park at hotels. But they say it's impossible to predict how many convention-goers will drive into town once the complex opens in 2013.
During the day, construction crews and office workers are competing for space in nearby parking facilities. With fewer parking spaces open in the area, some garage owners and operators already are raising rates.
"You find it in pockets, and we're in a pocket now where there's a definite shortage of parking," said Brent Ballard, managing partner of the Calfee, Halter & Griswold law firm, which recently moved to East Sixth Street. "I know rates have gone up. The sort of $145-a-month parking in our neighborhood is over, I think, for a while."
Anticipating potential demand, developer CRM Real Estate Services decided to increase the size of a new Rockwell Avenue parking garage, opening this week next to Calfee's headquarters, from 150 spaces to 330. When the city of Cleveland filed a federal grant application last month for a pedestrian bridge to link the area around the convention center and the lakefront, the proposal included a 725-space parking garage.
Ken Silliman, chief of staff to Mayor Frank Jackson, said the mayor is more focused on pedestrians, bicycles and public transportation. "We're building the city around the movement of people more than the movement of cars," he said.
Still, city officials acknowledge perceptions that parking is tight in the heart of downtown.
Last year, casino developer Rock Ohio Caesars LLC bought the Gateway North parking garage from the city. Between that garage and a new parking-and-valet center, the casino will have about 1,350 spaces across Ontario Street when it opens in mid-May.
Marcus Glover, the casino's general manager, said Rock Ohio Caesars has leased a 320-space parking lot in the Warehouse District from the Asher family. The garage and the lot will offer free parking to casino guests who play for at least 30 minutes or meet certain thresholds in Caesars Entertainment Corp.'s customer-loyalty program.
For nongamblers, the rates will jump. Glover wouldn't say how high. With parking operators describing the casino as "a special event every night," though, it would be no surprise to see daily rates of $20 or more near the casino.
Rock Ohio Caesars also is negotiating to use 300 spaces in the area for overflow valet parking, if necessary. Glover would not identify the property, saying the deal is not done. That would put the casino in control of nearly 2,000 spaces, slightly fewer than the 2,100 slot machines in the gaming hall.
Less-populated lots on downtown's outskirts
The east end of Cleveland's massive Municipal Parking Lot, south of Burke Lakefront Airport, sits empty. Parking surrounding Cleveland Browns Stadium is packed on game days but vacant for much of the year. The city's Gateway East Garage, near Quicken Loans Arena and Progressive Field, isn't full.
Parking operator Lou Frangos, who owns properties in the Gateway district, says some of his lots are 70 percent occupied on a typical day, despite rates as low as $2.25. It doesn't matter how cheap you make parking, Frangos said, if the demand isn't there.
With the potential for traffic and rates to rise near Public Square and the convention center site, civic advocates and public officials are looking at ways to direct visitors to less-used parking and transport them from low-cost spaces on the outskirts to the center of downtown.
The city is installing signs to direct people to attractions and parking. The Downtown Cleveland Alliance, a group that represents property owners, is developing a parking map that could be used by tourists and potential office tenants. The group also is touting public transportation, which runs into the Tower City complex and circles the convention center.
"I hearken back to the opening of Gateway, when there was a lot of concern about parking," said Joe Marinucci, the alliance's chief executive. "When the teams were initially negotiating their leases for the facilities, they asked for 10,000 spaces. We ultimately built 3,200 spaces, and at the end of the day, a significant number of people used public transportation."
The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority plans to expand its free trolley service, which runs during the workday, to evenings and weekends. RTA is trying to raise private money, to top off a federal grant, for the extended hours and a new East Ninth Street trolley line.
A bus line loops the municipal lot on weekdays. And the RTA Waterfront Line, where trains run on weekends, could be returned to daily service if there's demand from people parking near the waterfront, said Joe Calabrese, the transit agency's general manager. RTA already expects to revive Waterfront Line service when the first phase of the Flats East Bank project opens in 2013.
"I think it's going to be, for some people, a cultural shift to look at RTA a little bit more seriously or think about carpooling or alternate methods of commuting to and from where they work or where they want to go out to have dinner," said Kathleen Mooney, the interim director of parking services at Cleveland State University. "We know that Clevelanders are very devoted to their vehicles, and it's very difficult to shake them."
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