The city of Durango, adamant to address residents’ concerns about on-street parking, is exploring options to get city staff members’ vehicles off the streets and into designated areas as discussions continue around a joint city hall and police station.
Those options have proved limited.
City Council reviewed five potential remedies to on-street parking in the area of East Second Street and 12th Street near the campus of the to-be joint city hall and police station on Tuesday.
Two of those solutions – using the Mason Center on East Third Avenue for parking and exempting the new facilities from city parking requirements – were immediately deemed nonviable.
Leasing parking space, building parking lots or a garage off campus, and use of the transit center for staff parking and shuttle service to Buckley Park adjacent to the campus remain on the table.
Artaic Group Project Manager Braden Demmerly said the city anticipates needing 139 parking spaces for employees at the future joint city hall and police station. Current plans accommodate 78 on-site parking spaces, leaving the city with a 61-space gap it must fill.
City Manager José Madrigal said City Hall and Durango Police Department employees occupy 60 to 80 on-street spaces daily, which residents have wanted the project to curb since its start.
Most councilors appeared sensitive to residents’ parking concerns.
Councilor Jessika Loyer said she’d be “murdered” if the city were to exempt itself from parking requirements for the new city hall and police station.
“I will move out of Durango. I am quitting the office/dais if that is the decision we choose going forward,” she said.
Councilor Gilda Yazzie’s suggestion of building a parking lot in a section of Buckley Park was met by about 10 seconds of silence from other councilors.
“We bought it,” Yazzie said.
City Council authorized the city manager to purchase Buckley Park for $3 million from Durango School District in summer 2024. At the time, city and school district officials celebrated the agreement for its use in preserving the park, a cherished green space in Durango.
Loyer and Madrigal restated that idea on Tuesday.
“We bought it to preserve the natural park. I don’t know what action would be needed from the council to do that or if it could be done,” Madrigal said. “... That has not been considered.”
Yazzie also proposed finding another source of funding to build an underground parking garage on the campus.
The garage was a part of the city’s original pitch for the city hall and police station project, but it was dropped from plans after the city realized structural requirements would drive construction costs past $10 million for the garage alone.
“I don’t know where we’d get the money to get the underground parking and beef up that, but just see what we come up with, or take the land from Buckley Park,” Yazzie said.
Demmerly walked councilors through each option.
Using the transit center as staff parking, which Madrigal said could be a short-term solution, would meet the city’s 61-space gap on its own at low to no cost.
Demmerly said the transit center’s Main Avenue trolley stops at Buckley Park roughly every 20 minutes and has 150 parking spaces. Some spaces are designated for electrical vehicle charging and transit staff parking, leaving about 116 spaces available.
The city also identified 14 potential lots within a one-fourth mile radius of the city hall and police station campus the city may be able to lease, Demmerly said. The city has narrowed that list to four possible locations.
Demmerly said the city could build an off-campus garage for city staff members during normal operations that would be open to public use on weeknights and weekends, which would serve as a long-term solution for city parking needs. But development would take time – likely longer than the city’s target deadline of fall 2028 – and it would be expensive.
The final option City Council reviewed, and one the city has contemplated previously, is to demolish the existing city hall and police station located at 10th Street and East Second Street, across the street from one another, and to build parking lots there or sell the properties that would develop the lots.
City Council directed Madrigal to continue researching the three remaining options – lease agreements, use of the transit center and a long-term parking garage, and reappropriating the existing city hall and police station lots.
cburney@durangoherald.com
