Newport is a city of approximately 11,000 residents located on Oregon’s Central Coast at the mouth of Yaquina Bay. While modest in size, Newport experiences intense and highly variable parking demand driven by tourism, seasonal events, and a concentration of activity in the city’s three commercial districts:The city has three key commercial centers:
- City Center, home to City offices, the retail- and entertainment-oriented ‘Deco District,’ and a planned new aquatic center expected to host major events;
- Nye Beach, a popular tourist destination featuring restaurants, galleries, and art and music venues; and
- The Bayfront, another popular tourist destination that doubles as home base to perhaps the nation’s most important Dungeness Crab fishing operation as well as other fisheries and related businesses.
Our team led a comprehensive parking supply and demand analysis conducted during both peak tourist season and the off-season, allowing the City to better understand how parking conditions change throughout the year. The project also included a significant outreach effort to date, with three public workshops—one for each district—held along with a two-year stakeholder process that iteratively refined the plan and recommendations, ultimately producing a cohesive parking strategy that balanced visitor access, local business needs, and neighborhood livability.
While new supply was absolutely on the table at the outset of this project—our work included feasibility studies for parking garages on both Nye Beach and the Bayfront—the final plan went in a different direction entirely, utilizing transit, branding, signage, and lighting to activate existing under-utilized supply, and brought parking meters to the Oregon Coast for the first time. Parking meters were turned on May 1, 2024.
Brian Davis led this work while in a previous position.