City of Victoria council weighs parking deck, TIF and management options as downtown grows

City Manager Dana Hardy presented a decade-long record of downtown parking studies and management actions Wednesday night as the Victoria City Council weighed whether to revisit a city-led parking structure highlighted by recent redevelopment proposals.

Hardy told the council the city's parking strategy is rooted in the 2008 master plan's emphasis on walkability and preserving "the Victoria experience," and that the 2018 parking study found peak utilization around 75% — a level that "just doesn't warrant new supply" in the study team's view. "The consistent finding has been that downtown parking concerns are driven more by proximity than actual capacity," Hardy said.

Hardy summarized the inventory and recent changes: the 2018 analysis counted about 445 spaces within roughly a one-eighth-mile walking radius of the core, of which about 48 were private and some 397 were publicly available. Staff said the city has added 81 spaces since 2018 and expects roughly 90 more from development in the next 12'18 months, which staff said would likely keep capacity stable or improved without a new structure.

Engineering work done in 2019 by an outside firm evaluated two ramp concepts near Rose Street. A two-level concept on the Rose…