The City seems to believe the parking deck they got out of their tax break deal with the Solis Sugar Hill developers was a huge win. The truth is, the City is paying $4.95 million for it. And that figure does not include the costs of forgone property tax revenue for Sugar Hill and Gwinnett County, all of which will be made up by other taxpayers.
So, what exactly did we get for that amount?
The entire parking deck contains 650 total parking spaces. Both the Temple Drive and Hillcrest entrances to the parking deck provide access to all of the parking spaces in the structure.
What the Apartments Get:
Three hundred (300) spaces are allotted for residents of the approximately 300 apartments. That’s about one car per apartment.
The apartment building consists of 30 studios (10%), 139 one-bedroom units (48%), 112 two-bedroom units (38%) and 10 three-bedroom (3%) units. Rates start at $1600 for a studio. Due to the size and cost of these apartments, it makes sense that there would be more than one adult living in a lot of them.
If even a third of the one-bedrooms house couples with both people driving, and half of the two-bedrooms have two driving adults, you would have about 100 more cars than spaces.
What the City Taxpayers Get:
One hundred fifty (150) parking spaces will be shared for private and public use. However, Solis’ “share” is much bigger than the public’s. The public is only allowed to use the shared spaces from 9 AM - 5 PM, Monday through Friday. On nights and weekends, the shared spaces are exclusively for apartment residents.
These shared spaces have signs stating that towing is strictly enforced, clearly intended to make sure the public vacates the spots during nights and weekends. There is no signage indicating that apartment residents must free up the spaces for public use during our 40 hours. So, out of 168 hours in a 7-day week, the public gets potential use of the spaces for 40 hours, less than 25% of the time. There is even a free EV charger that the apartment residents can use during their lion’s share of the parking time.
Two hundred (200) spaces are for public use. But, there is nothing to prevent apartment residents from using them, nor are there any signs to indicate that they are not allowed to use them. So in practice, those spaces are also shared.
The City provides a free EV charger in the public spaces as well, although it currently has a sign that makes it appear it is only for apartment residents.
Can the public share the apartment residents’ spaces? No. There is a security gate to make sure their spaces are only theirs. The apartment complex takes the apartment residents’ share of the parking very seriously.
The City seems a little more relaxed about the public’s share of the parking.
So, after spending $4.95 million, the City gets to use 350 public parking spaces - 150 of which we can use a little less than 25% of the time, and 200 spaces that are ours, but not off limits to the attached 300-unit apartment complex that probably doesn’t have enough parking if it leases to capacity.
What’s more, residents of this brand-new apartment complex already seem to prefer using the shared and public spaces, even when there are plenty of spaces available in the reserved portion of the parking deck. Driving through the deck twice yesterday - at about 2 PM and once at about 11 PM - there were about 52 and 66 vehicles in the shared spaces and public spaces. Both times, the vehicles were clustered around the apartment entrances to allow an easier walk into the building.
This was the same problem the City had with The Local, whose residents were using street parking and City Hall parking overnight until the City changed its parking rules and began ticketing violators.
The City seems to realize that even if it didn’t worsen the “Downtown” parking problem, it also didn’t fix it.
The Capital Improvement Project budget published last year shows the City earmarked $5,588,500 out of the 2023 SPLOST proceeds for “Downtown Public Parking” in 2024. The City has been reticent about what that entails. During the budget hearings last year, at least one resident asked the City what this was and received no response. I asked Planning Director Kaipo Awana about a parking deck in “Downtown” during the recent “roundtable” discussions for the Envision 100 comprehensive land use plan update, and received an uncomfortable look and nothing else.
Like the overall SOLIS apartment tax-break deal that both contributed to the parking problem and awkwardly and expensively tried to solve it while probably failing (all at taxpayer expense), next year’s parking plans must be too awesome for taxpayers to know about.
