Studio Davis recently concluded work on a parking study and plan for downtown Dallas, Oregon, a city of 18,000 about 15 miles west of Salem. Designated as an urban renewal district (URD) in 2004, Downtown Dallas has blossomed into a busy mixed-use area that serves as the Polk County seat as well as the area’s hub for retail, entertainment, and employment, creating several distinctive streams of demand that compete for the city’s parking resources.
Our work began with a comprehensive inventory of parking assets within the study area, followed by an analysis of demand patterns on a weekday and weekend. There are also several development/redevelopment projects planned within the district, so our work projected the potential impacts from these. Both the URD plan and the city’s code contemplated the eventual creation of a parking district within downtown, so our a key piece of our study was exploring this idea.
Our final plan provided an innovative model for a Parking Benefit District that will function as part and parcel of the URD. Other key elements of our plan included a detailed recommendations for updating time limits, improving parking visibility via signage, striping, and wayfinding, and an exploration of opportunities for using an oversupply of privately owned parking as public parking resources. Notably, this parking study made use of the parking data methodology and tool that Studio Davis created for the Parking Management Jump Start Guide. Using this customizable tool as a jumping-off point provided a head-start that allowed us to stretch the city’s data collection budget further than anticipated, yielding extra insights and observations to better inform decisions.