Better solution needed for Old Town parking garage plan

Meg's soapbox on the proposed parking garage is in the Thursday Coloradoan. We're including the article here as well as we believe that part of protecting our Old Town homes involves keeping neighborhoods safe and not having large buildings looming over smaller single family homes.

The photo included with this article was not shown in the Coloradoan post, but was an image on display at the neighborhood meeting regarding the parking garage. It shows residential houses with the parking garage across the alley. Note that you can see the garage not just down the sidewalk, but also above the houses on the left. The garage would be even more visible in the winter when the leaves are off of the trees.

Here's the soapbox article from the Coloradoan:

Blue Ocean, a part of the OtterBox family, has proposed to build a six-story office building, commercial and retail space, and a five-level parking garage on Meldrum Street between Mountain Avenue and West Oak Street. The parking garage, as currently planned, would have entrances and exits on both Meldrum and Oak.

I recognize the need for additional parking on the west side of commercial Old Town. The block under question is zoned for downtown commercial on the east half and residential on the west half. The city doesn’t have a buffer zone between the residences and the commercial zone, despite the fact that the City Plan is quite clear that there should be one. In fact, this block is the only one downtown where commercial zoning butts up right next to single-family homes, in this case, historic homes that have been there for more than a century. I have two chief safety concerns regarding the construction of a parking garage on a residential block and on an important pedestrian and bicycle corridor between downtown and residential Old Town.

This proposal is an aesthetic affront (can you imagine the back side of a five-level parking garage being the view from your backyard?), but it also poses a very serious safety concern to construct a parking garage so close to residential housing. Families with small children not only use this route to walk to the library and other downtown amenities, but some families with small children live only a house or two away from where this proposed parking garage would stand. We also have neighbors here who have lived in their houses 50, 60, some even more than 70 years. They’re not as nimble as they used to be. And sometimes walking past a parking garage requires jumping out of the way if a motorist doesn’t see you as they enter or exit the garage.

In addition, West Oak is a quiet street because it deadends at the baseball fields to the west and at College to the east, and it is a slower, quieter street than Mountain with its higher speed bicycle commuters and higher traffic load. But putting a parking garage entrance/exit onto West Oak will encourage traffic to approach the garage along Oak from Shields Street, greatly increasing the amount of cut-through traffic in the neighborhood.

This isn’t a NIMBY issue. It’s bad planning and it shouldn’t happen. Tall commercial buildings and a five-level parking garage should not be allowed in the same block as family homes, especially historic homes that have been there since the early 1900s. In any other part of town, such a juxtaposition would not be allowed by the city, neighbors or adjacent homeowner associations.

There are other solutions. I ask the city of Fort Collins and Downtown Development Authority to work with Blue Ocean and nearby commercial land owners and large employers to collectively develop a parking garage in an arrangement that would be safer for the families living in the neighborhood just to the west of this proposed project. The big employers in this area include those in the Key Bank building, 1st National Bank, Larimer County and the Lincoln Center as well as OtterBox. A better solution would help us all.

Meg Dunn is a resident of Old Town Fort Collins.