Farmers Markets!

There are many reasons to celebrate the return of spring, longer days, warmer weather, but one of the reasons I celebrate is the return of fresh produce from local farms heralded by the restart of local farmers markets. 

Don't get me wrong, I love a Chilean peach as much as anyone, and you don't have much of a choice if you want a peach in the middle of February. But no amount of industrial farming and careful handling techniques can rival produce purchased and eaten on the same day it was picked.

Because I found the farmers markets around Cedar Rapids to be a bit confusing (seriously, the downtown farmers market has three different location depending on what day it is on, and don't even get me started about how stupid it is to move the Saturday market around,) I had to create a Google calendar.

Take a look at the calendar, and if you think it might be useful, add it to the list of calendars you can view by clicking the little icon in the lower right-hand corner.

Note: I have never tried to share a calendar with an HTML address, so I don't know how it will work. Please give me feedback, the first farmers market is the Hiawatha market which starts at 11 am on April 4th.

More on parking in Cedar Rapids

When I went to the recent "Parking in Action" round table discussion, put on by the Cedar Rapids Downtown District, I went in thinking the parking system in Cedar Rapids was a bloated system with too many decrepit parking garages serving a an audience who was unwilling to walk a block to save their lives.

What I saw and heard over the next hour and a half made me believe the parking system is part of a poorly organized system, yet it is positioned to be a strong catalyst for downtown development. And most of the people in Cedar Rapids are still unwilling to walk a block to save their lives.

In a tone very similar to the recent transit open houses, much of the message was about what we can do with an underfunded system in the meantime, and what it could turn into if done correctly.

Prior to the formal presentation, the question was posed to each table to list the top three concerns with the parking system as it stands today. The answers from approximately 20 tables were pretty uniform; price, location and ease of use. A few unique responses were security concerns with the parkades, the appearance/maintainable of the parkades, and the lack of access control leading to permit holders not having spaces on night and weekends.

The presentation by Dennis Burns, vice president of parking consultant Carl Walker Inc. (video of the presentation), contained images from cities where parking ramps are designed to reflect the values of the communities they were built in, subterranean lots to allow parks to be build at street level, open and inviting parking garages and multi-use buildings incorporating commercial spaces at street level and parking and residential above.

Burns talked about many ideas which could be incorporated into Cedar Rapids' current parking system to encourage people to use it as it exists today. These ideas included new and simplified signage and maps to make it easier for visitors to know where to park and where to go, a policy of "first hour free" to encourage use of the off street parking system and remove the requirement for parking validation.

Other slides focused on new technology which could be used to combine multiple parking meters into a single point of use which would accept credit and debit cards. Burns stated that in other cities where the only change was the addition of a system which accepted credit and debit cards resulted in an increase of revenue 15-20% solely due to the increased ease of use.

The general theme carried throughout the presentation was the organization necessary to have a strong parking system. In many cities the parking system uses the profits generated from the on-street parking to subsidize the structured parking as well as to reinvest into improving the surrounding streetscapes. These improved areas result in more people visiting the downtown therefore increasing the revenues for the parking system.

While the parking system in Cedar Rapids is not organized to be able to do this (at least not currently) we have one distinct advantage, the city of Cedar Rapids owns ~78% of all the parking in the downtown area (which is huge compared to other cities).

One thing I thought was made clear during this presentation, if Ron Corbet really wants to revitalize the downtown area of Cedar Rapids, eliminating all parking fees for ten years isn't really an option, this would simply result in the parkades to fall further into disrepair and won't allow the city to advance our parking system for another ten years.

Parking in Cedar Rapids

I'm new to Cedar Rapids, so I will admit there are issues I don't understand the full complexity.

One of these issues is the apparent parking problem in downtown Cedar Rapids. I say there is a parking problem because there are currently two ongoing issues which need to deal with the parking problem.

The first issue is where to build the new library. Not only is no one raising the idea of just reusing the existing location (after adding some flood gates to the existing earth berms,) but it appears the two best locations have been ruled out due, in part, to a lack of parking.

 "The losers were the TrueNorth and Banjo Equipment blocks, both between Fourth and Fifth Avenues SE, to the south and east of Greene Square Park. Library board members said both sites were plagued by uncertainties, especially parking and flood insurance."

I have to scratch my head over the uncertainty of parking, because if the TrueNorth site was selected, it would be right next to a 9 story parking structure, which is ~half empty during it's peak time (full disclosure, I park in this garage, I never have to drive above the fifth level to find a spot). In addition, it would be diagonal from another parking garage.

The second issue is Doug Neumann, president of the Downtown District stating that downtown needs a new parking ramp. This statement is at odds with the consultant hired to manage the parking system in Cedar Rapids, who said that there is no need for a new parking garage.

As the consultant said, there are 918 unoccupied parking spaces in the parkades during peak occupancy. 918! That is literally a parking lot the size of several football fields. But we need more parking ramps.

Neumann says "If we don’t want to significantly hinder this community’s efforts at job creation and economic development, we do, indeed, need a new parking ramp in the vicinity of the new federal courthouse," this statement doesn't address the fact that the area bounded by 8th Ave E, 2nd St SE, 12 Ave E and the river, is one giant parking lot.

As Chuck Wieneke suggested, maybe these people should walk more and lose weight.

My final word, take a quick look at the parking map, provided by the Cedar Rapids parking system. It doesn't even show all of lot 44 (or any of the private lots around downtown), but it does a pretty good job illustrating how much parking is available in the off-street system around downtown.


Drive less, walk more, lose some weight.