Downtown parking occupancy up midyear; film festival passes boost weekend revenue

Ethan Pittney, the city’s parking resource specialist, told the Downtown Parking Committee on March 12 that midyear FY26 occupancy rose “in the morning … through kind of early afternoon,” while evenings show a decline as the city refines operations.

Pittney said the system’s roughly 3,200 gated off-street spaces show differing demand by lot: Lot 2, a large garage, remains relatively underutilized; surface lots such as Lot 3 and Lot 4 see consistently higher occupancy, particularly on Saturday farmers market days. He noted Lot 4’s weekday uptick is likely construction-related, adding “we've seen an average of about 20–25 cars per day more there” from construction activity.

The committee also heard results from this year’s film festival parking program. Pittney said the city sold 550 standard festival passes at $50 each (with 40 concierge passes donated) and reported about 5,100 total parking sessions across those passes—an average of roughly 10 sessions per pass and an average stay of about 4.5 hours. Staff calculated the hourly-equivalent value of those sessions at about $57,000 versus pass revenue of roughly $27,000, producing an estimated $30,000 in passholder savings; Pittney cautioned that “that's the savings they saw. That's not necessarily revenue lost” because behavior would have differed if attendees paid hourly.

The film festival drove notable lot-level demand: Lot 9 (above the new film center) regularly hit capacity during the festival, with overflow moving to Lot 2 and Lot 5 serving as the prime location for Arlington Theater screenings. Pittney pointed out a daily festival high of about $37,000 in hourly revenue on the final Saturday, and said overall hourly revenue during festival week was up about $14,000 from last year.

Committee members welcomed the data. Committee member Lee said the information is valuable for downtown merchants’ staffing and operations planning but expressed concern that “I’m discouraged to see … the increase in non-paid transactions,” urging staff to monitor the trend. Others noted that activation on State Street and events like the farmers market materially increase downtown visitation and parking demand.

What’s next: staff said they will continue to monitor lot-by-lot occupancy, refine permit and pricing strategies, and share more granular sales and origin data (locals vs. out-of-towners) as available to inform business outreach and permit marketing.