Do We Really Need Another Parking Garage Downtown?

City Council has introduced an ordinance, to be voted on at its next meeting, that will allow the city to acquire the annex on Lancaster Square by eminent domain.

Plans are to demolish the annex to make way for a parking garage to serve the 101 North Queen (the old Buliva building) redevelopment project and the Hotel Lancaster.

By Signing this petition you are in opposition of the plan to replace part of Lancaster Square with a parking garage. The petition will be presented to council before their vote on January 9th at 7:30pm in the Lancaster City Council Chamber. They will also be having a meeting to discuss the parking garage on the 8th at 6:00pm. If you can join we highly encourrage it. 

Reasons to Oppose This Parking Garage:

A $10 million garage will be seen by many as a boondoggle when money, time and effort could be used in the neighborhoods, especially south of King Street.

The only known confirmed tenant of 101 N Queen, Cargas, does not support a new parking structure.

The garage would be in direct opposition to the city's professed desire to become more walkable and bicycle friendly and would render dangerous the proposed bikeway on Christian Street.

There is no current comprehensive study of parking in the City of Lancaster. Such a study would take into account all parking, including public and private lots, on-street, and structures. Any increase or decrease in parking should be based on the results of such a study.

Nothing should be done until real numbers of currently available spaces are available.

When a study is completed, a 21st-century system could be adopted to identify available spots for drivers looking to park. There are phone apps and signage in existence that will do these things.

A parking structures is a passive use that generates little in the way of consumer spending or other economic activity. There are much better uses for such valuable real estate.

Lancaster is now a true hot spot with considerable economic growth potential at present. The developer will not pull out without a new garage.

A parking garage is a way of subsidizing suburban commuters at the expense of city residents who must deal with the traffic.

Lancaster has consistently poor air quality. Encouraging driving by building parking new garages will only worsen the problem.

There are certainly better uses for CRIZ money, time, and effort than a parking garage. Directing money paid by local businesses toward a project designed to support an out of town developer and chains like Starbucks that are hard on local businesses is hard to justify.

New technologies and trends such as Uber, Lyft, and driverless cars will be changing transportation habits in the very near future. A new parking garage could very quickly become an expensive dinosaur.

The Duke Street garage is currently attached to Hotel Lancaster and 101NQ at present. This could be either repaired or replaced with a modern, mixed-use structure that could be converted to fully non-parking use in future decades.

When a fully-integrated view is available of the pool of parking in the city the Lancaster parking Authority could manage the system that would include all parking (public, private, surface, garage, on-street), apps, etc.