Ogden Mayor Matthew Godfrey wants city to help pay for 5 downtown parking garages

OGDEN — A huge factor stalling development downtown is the need for more stalls — the parking variety.

Mayor Matthew Godfrey is proposing using some city funds to help build five parking garages that would add 1,350 stalls to the downtown mix.

"We're grateful that there are times when it's bad," Godfrey said Thursday about the lack of parking during downtown's resurgence. "It's a wonderful problem to have. For many, many years, it was not an issue.

"But we have these large sections of town we're in the process of redeveloping, and that is not feasible without parking structures. We need those to get the tenants and hence the developers to move forward with them."

The mayor's proposal, presented to the City Council at a work session this week, calls initially for $700,000 and a total of about $7.1 million of Business Depot Ogden lease revenues over a decade to help meet the total construction cost of $20.3 million. The revenues could be used for debt service on either bonds or conventional loans. The remaining funding would come from other sources, including Weber County, the federal government and property owners.

The $7.1 million would allow the projects to be economically viable, Godfrey said. Without them, the city stands to lose development to suburbs.

The mayor wants quick action, with construction beginning no later than 2011. Two mixed-use projects nearby are ready to move forward, but parking remains an issue, Godfrey said.

"We have to find a way to find parking access for customers and clientele," said Dave Hardman, president and CEO of the Ogden/Weber Chamber of Commerce. "Street parking is not nearly enough."

Hardman said one growing trend focuses on convenience, with shoppers preferring easy and quick access to stores.

"Proximity is really critical," Godfrey said. "Retailers and office tenants are not willing to walk great distances, and they know their customers won't. They don't want to park in one place and walk a couple of blocks to get to their store. So you have to have adjacency for businesses to be successful."

Both Godfrey and Hardman said the city-owned, 1,530-stall parking garage at The Junction — a scaled-down-but-renovated remnant of the former Ogden City Mall — already is often full. And Godfrey expects parking capacity woes there once additional developments at The Junction and nearby are completed.