A proposed update of the Whitefish Downtown Master Plan takes an aggressive approach to the city’s parking problem, recommending sites for three parking structures in the coming years.

The City Council in May narrowly approved a new City Hall with a three-story parking structure at the existing City Hall site. But the revised downtown plan goes much further, calling for two additional future parking structures plus other seasonal surface lots.

One of the additional parking structures is suggested at Spokane Avenue and Second Street to replace a city surface parking lot. A parking garage was suggested for this site several years ago but the project never got off the ground largely because of the expense and subsequent economic downturn.

Another future parking structure is targeted for the historic Railway District, encompassing the block between First and Railway streets where an apartment complex now stands.

All of the parking structures should have retail space on the ground floors, the draft plan recommends.

The plan also designates a parking reserve site near the train depot and lists other potential lots for summertime overflow, such as the city’s snow storage lot near Whitefish Middle School.

There’s a current parking deficit of more than 200 spaces in downtown Whitefish, and that could grow to more than 700 needed spaces if development associated with the downtown master plan is realized, an earlier consultant study showed.

“To maintain downtown business competitiveness with outlying Highway 93 commercial strip areas, providing adequate retail parking is the prime objective of the [downtown] parking element,” the Crandall Arambula consulting firm noted in its revised draft of the downtown plan.

The Portland-based firm was hired in 2006 to complete the first Whitefish Downtown Business District Master Plan and was rehired a year ago to start on the update. A town meeting held in August 2012 kicked off the update.

The draft now heads to the Whitefish Planning Board in September for a recommendation and should be presented to the City Council in October.

The 2006 plan cost $177,353, of which the city paid $141,670. A block grant chipped in $15,000 and the Heart of Whitefish downtown support group raised $20,683.

The update will cost $69,654 and will be paid for fully with tax-increment finance district revenue. The Heart of Whitefish is not participating in paying for the update, City Manager Chuck Stearns said.

Business owner Rhonda Fitzgerald of the Heart of Whitefish said the organization is in favor of the update.

“I think quite a few things are logical next steps,” she said. “It’s good to have outside eyes look at things. They (Crandall Arambula) take an understanding of how [downtowns] work everywhere and the knowledge of our community and they see things we don’t see.”

Fitzgerald said many of the elements of the 2006 plan that have come to fruition, such as the streetscape, have strengthened the city’s commercial core. Extending the streetscape design to Baker Avenue and onto First Street in the Railway District is pivotal in expanding the commercial district, she said.

Building on a streetscape project that reconstructed and beautified Central Avenue and connecting streets, the revised plan maps out key components of the future vision for growth and improved access to downtown. Beyond the retail parking structures, those fundamental concepts include:

• Create a downtown retail loop. Extend Central Avenue retail shops and streetscape north to Depot Street and south to Fourth Street. Expand downtown retail growth into the Railway District along First and Third streets and Lupfer Avenue, with the same streetscape character.

• Establish a downtown “living room.” Construct a large paved plaza-like multipurpose space for downtown events at the intersection of Railway Street and Central Avenue just west of the train depot. That area already is heavily used for the Tuesday night farmers market and other arts and craft shows.

• Create safe and convenient neighborhood connections. Provide multi-use pedestrian and bike trails and a protected bikeway along Spokane Avenue and Depot Street that connects the downtown to the Whitefish River, parks and residential neighborhoods. A protected bikeway is physically separated from vehicle travel lanes by a landscaped barrier, curb, sidewalk, parked cars or other means.

A couple of projects recommended in the original downtown plan have been scrapped in the update. For example, the revised plan omits a proposed “Whitefish Landing” waterway that would have created a manmade water channel off the Whitefish River and a 25-acre resort development of hotels, rentals and high-density residential development.

The plan also scraps a future pedestrian and bike path underpass below Baker Avenue, and incorporates the existing City Hall location as the site for a new City Hall, rather than the Depot Park area that initially was recommended.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.