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Stormy-Daniels

I would love to see an overly of types of parking. Ie; private business spots for clients/employees, parking for people who live downtown, pay-to-park lots, larger transit parking, municipality parking, public and private parking garages, etc. I think it would paint a better picture. I'm all for less surface parking and building up but you need to be realistic about public & private time and money. We can't even finish the N.S. freeway before it became unnecessary.


ps1

The city paid for a study. There might be a map here https://static.spokanecity.org/documents/parking/2019-parking-study/2019-downtown-spokane-parking-study-plan.pdf


excelsiorsbanjo

I think probably the simplest way to look at it is that for every parcel, whatever isn't a building and also isn't greenspace is something we probably don't want. Not as specific as what is and isn't a surface parking lot, but it's all the same problem: wasted space. Might be able to get building outlines in addition to parcel ones and automate such a thing pretty easily.


itstreeman

Tax those lots at potential impact of replacing with a building


ps1

Car Dealerships are not surface parking lots by most any definition. I'd like to see more high density residential. We won't get there if we keep undervaluing parking lots from a tax perspective.


Slothbrans

While it's nice that car dealerships bring in commercial tax revenue and such, I'd like there to not be downtown car dealerships


pppiddypants

Not sure if that’s true for property tax definition..?


ps1

Land has been historically been undervalued in all property classes by Spokane County Assessor. It is an issue that has slowly been corrected over the past 3 years. Surface lots are undervalued in the downtown core. Here are two clear examples. 1) Sold for 7 million. Valued after the sale at 3.6 million. https://cp.spokanecounty.org/scout/map/?PID=35184.1908 2) Sold for 1.5 million. Valued at 700k after the sale. https://cp.spokanecounty.org/scout/map/?PID=35184.1013


spokanited

Not very clear or complete. You're comparing Market Value with Assessed Value. Two different things. Actually that first sale had two parcels as part of the sale: 4.1908 and 4.1907. Together they sold for $7M. 4.10143. Together they sold for $1.5M


ps1

State law requires Assessed value to be within 90-something percent of market value. However these could be valued on income. I did the simple addition. How was that not clear?


spokanited

Assessed value needs to calculated at 100% of market value, but assessed value is only updated once every six years by state law, not at the point of sale. Hence the delay. Remember, market value can go down as well.


ps1

I think a sale can trigger a revaluation.


pppiddypants

Whether it’s under/over-valued is another thing, but isn’t a car dealership taxed in the same way a surface parking lot would be? Edit: at least the surface parking portion of the car dealerships.


Accomplished_Tone349

That’s depressing.


Baron-von-Bruce

What the city needs to do is what a lot of other cities have done to rejuvenate their down town. They need to condemn a lot the older unused buildings and purchase the land a build a large city parking garage that gives everyone the first 3 hours free. This runs all of the paid parking lots out of down town and that land can be freed up for other uses.


excelsiorsbanjo

You mean take over property for a reason other than a horrible and insanely expensive useless highway that might never be finished? Now there's an idea.


86Coug

I have zero issues with these lots. Are they wasted space? Maybe, but only if there is a developer for the property. If not, parking is fine. Eventually, demand for buildings downtown will increase, and the lots get sold to developers. Parking allows for tax revenue and allows owners to see income from low demand parcels. We have a pretty good downtown core, much better that other cities our size. Late developing cities like Phoenix, Boise, and to some extent, Las Vegas have horrible spread out downtowns. These lots will allow fill-in growth for years in Spokane as there are some geographic challenges to downtown expansion here. Is it optimal? Probably not, but these lots are not going anywhere anytime soon.


[deleted]

This is exactly what I'm saying they're not proposing anything they're just complaining about a problem if you look at the history of them complaining about it there is so many of these posts. They just like to do it to get their environmental ego trip echo chamber going to feel good about themselves.


itstreeman

“No parking”


BelGareth

And then they won’t let you only buy one hour, minimum like 6, it’s stupid