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Brooks: Parking lot overhaul won't solve county problems

Keith Erickson Staff Writer | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 5 years, 3 months AGO
by Keith Erickson Staff Writer
| September 24, 2019 1:00 AM

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KEITH ERICKSON/Press County Commissioner Bill Brooks does not believe the work being done on the Administration Building's parking lot will solve the parking problem.

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Brooks

COEUR d’ALENE — A $302,000 parking lot reconstruction project underway at the county’s administrative building is expected to ease traffic flow and improve pedestrian safety, but don’t expect it to eliminate the parking crunch.

Visitors to the facility, which houses the busy motor vehicle and driver’s licensing departments, will still find it difficult to find a parking spot — much to the dismay of Kootenai County Commissioner Bill Brooks.

“This won’t solve the problem,” Brooks said Monday.

The project includes the addition of 11 parking spots — from 87 spaces to 98 — in the lot accessed off Government Way. That’s hardly worth the hefty price tag, the commissioner said.

On a 2-1 vote in August with Brooks dissenting, commissioners approved a $513,000 contract for improvements to the admin building parking lot and to the lot at the county’s election office on North Third Street.

Shawn Riley, the county’s project manager, said reconstruction to the Government Way parking lot includes moving and widening vehicle access and redesign of the lot itself, both of which will provide safer conditions for pedestrians.

“It was kind of a mess the way it was set up before,” Riley said. “If you can get 11 more spaces out of it and make traffic flow better and make it safer for pedestrians, then I think you’ve accomplished what you wanted to do.”

Brooks said a big part of the parking problem is not with limited spaces, but who’s using them.

“If we didn’t have so many (county) employees parking there, we’d have plenty of spaces for the public,” he said.

Brooks estimates 40 percent of the spots on any given workday are occupied by county workers, a violation of policy. Signage on the lot indicates it is for visitors only, not county staff.

Brooks said staffers using the lot frustrates him because the county paid $1.3 million in 2017 for design and construction of a parking lot on city-leased land just south of Northwest Boulevard in front of the administration building.

Under an agreement with the city of Coeur d’Alene, 205 parking spots were designated for county employees and “county campus visitors” during weekday working hours. Work even included signalization for pedestrians crossing Northwest Boulevard.

To help alleviate parking congestion in the admin lot, Riley said, officials urge people visiting motor vehicle licensing — especially those with large rigs or pulling boats or trailers — to do business at the Post Falls DMV, which has considerably more parking.

With limited space adjacent to the administration building, Riley said options are limited.

“The problem isn’t just with the DMV,” he said. “The county’s biggest meeting room is on the first floor of the administration building, so you get 70 or 80 people at a meeting combined with two or three jury trials and, boom, there’s a parking problem.”

The parking lot work is being done by Athol-based T Lariviere Inc. Work is expected to be finished in mid-October.

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