Tag: occupancy

Parking notebook: 4th Street parking garage has unused capacity, based on data halfway into 2022

The new public parking garage at 4th and Walnut streets, which opened in late August of 2021, has a lot of unused capacity.

That’s based on entry/exit and occupancy data for the first half of 2022, which was provided to The B Square by the city of Bloomington in response to a records request.

For the first six months of 2022, the peak occupied state of the garage came on June 22 between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. when 315 cars were parked in the garage—based on the numbers provided by the city. More typical peak occupancy for a weekday is around 150 cars.

The reports generated by the parking system software show the capacity of the garage at 500 spaces, but during the design and approval phase for the garage, the number was pegged at 537 spaces. A manual count by the B Square this week put the number of total spaces at 560.

Based on 560 spaces, a typical peak occupancy of 150 on any given day works out to about 27 percent. A conventional parking industry benchmark is that 85 percent occupancy is perceived as full.

The garage replaced by the newly built structure, because it was failing structurally, had 352 spaces.
Continue reading “Parking notebook: 4th Street parking garage has unused capacity, based on data halfway into 2022” →

4th Street parking garage update: Public art wrapped up, security firm hired for overnight patrols

By mid-afternoon on Thursday, workers had completed the installation of the colorful quilt-patterned panels on three sides of the new 4th Street parking garage in downtown Bloomington.

As they were packing up their gear, the crew from Ignition Arts, which did the fabrication and installation of the piece, told The B Square they were glad to have wrapped up the work before Christmas Eve.

The garage has been open for parking since Aug. 23.

Since its opening, a collection of incidents at the garage, in combination with city staffing challenges, has led the public works department to add some private security patrols.

On Tuesday, the board of public works approved a $2,325 contract with Marshall Security through the end of January, to provide monitoring of the 4th Street garage during overnight hours.

The payment system for the garage was not immediately operational when the garage opened, but it has since been installed. That means it’s possible to start trying to track occupancy levels, which have mostly been only a fraction of the 540-space capacity.

Continue reading “4th Street parking garage update: Public art wrapped up, security firm hired for overnight patrols” →

Required occupancy affidavits for renters OK’d by Bloomington city council, but city’s HAND department won’t maintain records

On a 5–3 vote on Wednesday night, Bloomington’s city council approved a new local law that requires landlords to sign and maintain an affidavit that lists the occupants of their rental properties.

The basic law applies just to those buildings with four or fewer rental units.

Tenants also have to sign an affidavit affirming the accuracy of the landlord’s affidavit.

But under the ordinance as adopted by the council, the affidavits signed by the landlord and tenant don’t have to be submitted to the city’s housing and neighborhood development (HAND) department.

Instead they have to be maintained by the landlord, and produced for scrutiny during any HAND rental inspection, or in response to a request from the city.

The stewardship of the affidavits was changed from the HAND department to the landlord through a major amendment to the legislation [Am 03], which was adopted by the council on Wednesday night.

Also a part of the amendment was the deletion of the relationship information among tenants that had been required in the version presented to the council at its first reading in May.

Two weeks ago, when councilmembers could have taken final action, they instead decided to postpone consideration of the ordinance until this week.

The ordinance is intended to help the HAND department enforce the city’s zoning code on the definition of a “family.” Family relationships help determine the maximum occupancy for a housing unit, under Bloomington’s unified development ordinance (UDO). Continue reading “Required occupancy affidavits for renters OK’d by Bloomington city council, but city’s HAND department won’t maintain records” →

Occupancy affidavits for smaller rental properties mulled by Bloomington city council

Excerpt from definition of “family” in Bloomington’s unified development ordinance (UDO).

Owners of Bloomington rental properties with four or fewer units might have to start submitting “a fully executed occupancy affidavit” to the city’s housing and neighborhood development (HAND) department.

Under a new ordinance proposed by the city’s administration, owners and tenants alike would need to sign statements about the number of adult occupants in a rental unit, and their relationship to each other.

The idea is to enforce the definition of a “family” in the city’s unified development ordinance (UDO). Bloomington’s UDO sets a limit of three for the number of unrelated adults who count as a family.

Adults who are related by blood or marriage are not restricted in number in the UDO’s definition of a family.

At its Wednesday meeting, the city council’s housing committee gave the administration’s proposed ordinance a first look. With a few grumbles, the committee voted unanimously to send the ordinance to the full council for possible enactment at the council’s June 2 meeting. Continue reading “Occupancy affidavits for smaller rental properties mulled by Bloomington city council” →