Businesses OK with Coeur d'Alene parking structure

COEUR d’ALENE — Just like the cars Pam and Pat Tackett supplied with parts, the couple’s business has been rolling along on all four cylinders for decades.

Soon, though, the couple’s North Idaho Import Parts on the 200 block of Third Street in downtown Coeur d’Alene will go the way of a pop song.

“They’re going to tear down the building and put up a parking lot,” Pam Tackett said.

For more than a decade, the city and its urban renewal agency, ignite cda, have been planning to accommodate an increase in downtown traffic with additional parking at its lot along Coeur d’Alene Avenue between Third and Fourth streets, north of the Federal Building.

The same block where the Tacketts started their business in 1983.

The planned $6 million, four-story parking structure at the site will replace the current lot — with its cracked pavement and 53 parking spots. And it will require the demolition of the auto parts store.

When it’s completed next year, the new structure will have more than 350 parking spots in the heart of downtown.

“You can’t get more centrally located,” said Sam Kennedy, who owns Cisco’s Gallery, which sells Native American and Western antiques.

Kennedy rents a spot in the city lot across the street from his shop, the site of the new garage. Sometimes when he returns to work after lunch, his spot has been taken, he said, an indicator that downtown parking is in high demand.

A few years ago when the city reconstructed Fourth Street, he lost 16 street-side parking spots near his business, Kennedy said.

Having nearby spots makes a difference because many of his clients are more than 50 years old, and he gets a lot of foot traffic from people who drive by. If they don’t see a parking spot, they just keep going.

The new garage, with its retrofitted downtown Coeur d’Alene ambiance — it will match the architecture of its surroundings, and murals have been suggested — is being cautiously embraced by surrounding business owners.

Frank Kaderka, the owner of Norm’s Auto Body, a staple Coeur d’Alene Avenue business since the 1960s — Kaderka bought it 21 years ago — is crossing his fingers. Downtown parking is at a premium, Kaderka said, so building a garage makes sense. He’s a little concerned about construction and how it will impact his business.

“That’s major construction, so it’s going to have some downside,” he said, “But it looks like it could be very consumer-friendly. God knows we need the parking.”

Next door at KnitKnit, a yarn and knitting supply store that faces the lot slated for construction, Elizabeth Poynor has one regret.

“I will be sad to lose some of the blue sky,” Poynor said. “But it’s not like I have lakefront property here.”

Like her neighbors on the block, she sees the project as necessary.

“If it looks nice, and they do the trees, and they do the art, it could be a beautiful structure,” she said.

A 2016 parking study by the city showed a deficit of 220 parking spots downtown during the summer tourism season, said Sam Taylor, deputy city manager. Within five years the deficit is projected to increase to 290 spots, and it will climb to 330 in a decade.

We really need the parking, Poynor said.

Her concern is assuring enough ticket kiosks at the entrance or inside the garage, so cars or people don’t stack up as they try to get in or pay for their space.

Taylor said the 35-foot-high garage, slated to break ground in late summer, will likely have two parking ticket dispensaries per floor.

Tackett, who raised three children in her auto parts store, with its BMW, Volkswagen and Merecedes Benz posters overlooking her work area, said there are too many memories in the business to relate without digging back through the years like flipping pages in a parts catalog.

“We were truly a mom-and-pop family business,” she said. But she has no regrets. The couple were approached several times by the urban renewal agency to buy her business and the building, and the last time was the charm.

“They accommodated us,” she said of the recent purchase that paves the way for the structure. “They were always great to deal with.”

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New overtime parking fines proposed for Cd’A

Fred Raap spends much of his day with a chalk stick.

Raap is not a teacher in the normal sense, but his work as an enforcer of downtown Coeur d’Alene parking regulations can be a bitter lesson for motorists who have overstayed their welcome.

Depending on how you see it, Raap’s rules — he enforces the city parking codes — could be changing.

City officials are considering raising parking fines from the standard $10 for cars that park overtime. As part of a recent parking study, consultants recommended a tiered fine system for city parking violations. First-time offenders would receive a courtesy ticket.

“It’s more of an education tool,” Sam Taylor, deputy city administrator, said. “They will get one free one to learn about the process.”

The process includes a $15 fine for a second ticket, $20 for a third ticket and a $25 fine for tickets a motorist earns thereafter.

All other on-street violations will be $15 and handicapped-accessible parking spot violations will be $100.

“The new fees are for street parking,” Taylor said.

Parking tickets in garages will be $20.

But none of this will be implemented until the city has a public hearing on the proposed fee increases. The hearing is set for May 2 during the regular city council meeting in the Community Room of the Coeur d’Alene Public Library.

If the parking fee increases are enacted, Raap — who is employed by Diamond Parking, the city’s parking lot vendor — will continue the work he is paid to do, with the exception of handing out one free ticket. That will be new.