Lynchburg Downtown Parking: Is Another Consultation Needed?

The Parking Authority consists of 7 members (2- Council members; 1 – Lynch’s Landing Executive Director; 1 - private individual involved in parking operations downtown; 1 - representative of a major operation requiring parking; 1 - individual with financial expertise; 1 – private citizen). And the current members are:

Dennis Howard, Chairman
Michael Gillette
Bert Dodson
Tom Gerdy
Linda Jones
Kelvin Moore
Terri Proffitt

There is something interesting here that you should know about. They are requesting an outside consultation (Are You Surprised?). This is occurring on the heels of another consultation that would make Main Street a two way road, which would decrease the available parking in downtown. It will be like two consultations butting into each other. One to increase parking, against the other to decrease.

What we can expect if the consultation is approved is at least another 100,000 dollars spent on opinion from an outsider. The likely candidate to do the survey is Desman Parking Associates, who would offer a multi-story structure, most likely with retail space on the first floor.

If the city wants to build something like this, they should askfor bids from architects, and locate the appropriate public land themselves. Why spend another 100,000 dollars? If you are wondering what else the Parking authority is conjuring up, look for increases in current monthly parking rates downtown. We can thank Desman Parking Associates for already putting that idea in the thoughts of the Parking Authority.

Kudo's to Mike Gillette, and Bert Dodson for figuring out more ways to uselessly spend your tax dollars.