Tag: Rick Siebert

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Truce: City and Mark Brown settle parking garage dispute

The city will be in charge of the Water Street Parking Garage starting August 1, and Mark Brown will collect rent. Staff photo

Two years ago, before Nazis came to Charlottesville in 2017, the big story was the contretemps between Mark Brown, co-owner of the Water Street Parking Garage, and then-mayor Mike Signer and the city.

The escalating parking wars led to suits and countersuits, panicked meetings of downtown business owners, threats of closing the garage and of eminent domain, challenges to the hiring of a former mayor and whopping legal bills on both sides.

At the July 16 City Council meeting, as the clock approached midnight, councilors approved a settlement that gives them most of what they wanted, but the full cost is not known at the present.

“I wasn’t sure until 11:58 last night this would get approved,” said Charlottesville Parking Center general manager Dave Norris, who has seen seemingly solid deals with the city fall apart before, the day after the meeting.

In the settlement hammered out over the past two years, Charlottesville Parking Center, which Brown owns and which manages the garage, agreed to sell 73 spaces to the city for $413,000. The spaces, previously owned by Wells Fargo, have been a sore point for the city, which sued Brown for buying them from the bank when the city had a right of first refusal should any parties want to unload their spaces.

“We’re selling them at the same price we paid for them,” says Norris, a former Charlottesville mayor whose own hiring was a point of contention when the city, through Chris Engel, director of economic development, questioned Norris’ qualifications to run a parking garage.

Charlottesville Parking Center was founded in 1959 by business owners who feared the emergence of shopping malls with ample parking would be a threat to getting people to shop downtown. The Water Street Parking Garage is a jointly owned public/private entity, and CPC owns the ground underneath the garage, as well as the surface lot across the street.

Although the city had the opportunity to buy Charlottesville Parking Center when it went on the market in 2008, it didn’t. Brown bought CPC in 2014 for $13.8 million and an uneasy alliance with the city began. In March 2016, Brown sued the city, alleging it forced him to offer parking below market rate—and below what was charged at the city-owned Market Street Garage.

In the settlement, the parking center will lease its remaining 317 spaces to the city for $50,000 a month for 16 years—with a 2.5 percent annual increase after the first year. The city believes it will make more than $900,000 in net revenue during the first year of the lease, according to a city document.

“It’s really a good thing for all parties after two years of contentiousness,” says Norris. “As of August 1, they’ll have full control and can set whatever hours and rates they want.”

CPC used to manage the Market Street Garage, but during the heat of battle, the city fired CPC and hired Lanier Parking to manage that garage. Most CPC employees who run the Water Street Garage will go to work for Lanier, which will take over the management of Water Street, city parking manager Rick Siebert told City Council.

When questioned by Mayor Nikuyah Walker, Siebert said none of the Water Street Garage employees will make less than the city’s minimum wage and that they have benefits.

For Charlottesville Parking Center administrators like Norris, it’s time to dust off those resumes. “This is the end of our role as a parking management company,” he says. “I’m exploring my own options.”

Brown continues to own the land underneath the garage. He was traveling in Greece, and in an email says the settlement is a “very slightly modified version” of a proposal CPC made to the city in January 2016 before any litigation was filed, “so we eventually succeeded in achieving our preferred resolution to the problem.”

At one point, Brown tried to buy the city’s portion of the garage—and the city did likewise. He also threatened to close the garage, which totally freaked out downtown business owners. The Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville made clear to the city that it believed the garage should remain publicly owned.

“I think we’ve gained significant efficiencies,” Siebert told City Council, as well as gaining control of the garage’s operation, “which I think is so important to the public.”

At the July 16 council meeting, Signer noted that “Ms. Galvin and I have some scar tissue and war wounds from this.”

Councilor Kathy Galvin recalled “all-day long mediation sessions.”

The city hired Richmond attorney Tom Wolf with LeClairRyan, who charged the city a discounted rate of $425 an hour. At press time, the city had not provided what those legal fees added up to over two years.

“We really decided to stick to our guns and stick up for this being a public good, a public asset,” said Signer. “And it was very difficult and there was a lot of fighting from the other side, a lot of scaremongering from some of the local journalistic outlets.”

He added, “This settlement a couple of years later is a good result for the public on all fronts.”

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In brief: Bad prank, bad parking, bad practices and more

Staff photo

Meter’s not running

Crews are set to start ripping meters out of the ground this week after City Council voted at its January 2 meeting to indefinitely suspend the parking meter pilot that began on streets surrounding the Downtown Mall in September.

“It seemed pointless to try to convince the manufacturer to continue to loan us this equipment,” says parking manager Rick Siebert, who was initially hired to implement the program. “We obviously didn’t want to pay rent with no revenue coming in.”

With no reimplementation date in sight, Siebert says he’s disappointed that the city seems to have permanently pumped the brakes on the pilot, and he’ll continue to work toward a solution to Charlottesville’s well-documented parking problem.

“We had some issues with parking before that led to hiring Nelson\Nygaard to do the study, which led to the initiation of the meter pilot,” he says. “Those issues haven’t just evaporated.”

By the numbers

  • 28 meters
  • 13 pay stations
  • 71 days in service
  • $51,490 generated in revenue
  • $42,995 paid in rent
  • $20,000 for a 2016 parking meter pilot implementation plan by Nelson\Nygaard
  • $500,000 for startup funds allocated by City Council in 2016 for personnel and initial equipment costs, including a $73,000 salary for hiring a parking manager

“Voting is the civic sacrament of democracy.”—James Alcorn, chair of Virginia Board of Elections, before a random drawing to determine the winner of House District 94 and control of the House of Delegates

Not funny

A teen hoaxer who on social media advised Monticello High students to not go to school January 8 underneath a photo of guns was charged with a Class 5 felony for making threats to harm people on school property. The post alarmed other schools around the country with MHS initials, and at least one in Pennsylvania canceled classes.

Malpractice

Mark Hormuz Dean. Photo Albemarle County Police

Police arrested Mark Hormuz Dean, 50, a physician at the Albemarle Pain Management Associates Clinic, on January 5 for two counts of rape, two counts of object sexual penetration and one count of forcible sodomy, which he has allegedly committed on the job since 2011. Dean has worked in pain management in Charlottesville since 2003, and performed more than 10,000 interventional pain procedures, according to the clinic’s website.

 

 

It’s about time

At the January 4 Board of Supervisors meeting, Governor Terry McAuliffe signed a 99-year lease that gives Albemarle County control of the 1,200-acre Biscuit Run Park, which the state has owned since 2010 and agreed to help open to the public.

Town crier

Photo Eze Amos

Christopher Cantwell has filed a lawsuit against anti-racist activists Emily Gorcenski and Kristopher Goad, who accused the “Crying Nazi” of spraying them with a caustic substance at UVA on August 11. Cantwell’s complaint claims the activists “framed” him in the alleged attack by spraying themselves with mace.

 

 

 

 

New county leadership

File photo

While perhaps not as monumental as Charlottesville’s election of its first African-American female mayor, Albemarle County’s Board of Supervisors has also picked new leaders. Ann Mallek has been named chair for the fifth nonconsecutive year and Norman Dill will serve as vice chair.

 

 

 

Trial date set

A three-week jury trial is scheduled to begin November 26 for James Alex Fields, the man who plowed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters on August 12. Fields is charged with first-degree murder, five counts of malicious wounding, three counts of aggravated malicious wounding and failing to stop at the scene of a crash.

 

 

 

Another missing person found dead

Three days after missing woman Molly Meghan Miller was found dead in her home on January 1, police found Arthur Mills, the Fluvanna County man who was reported missing January 3, dead on the side of Oliver Creek Road. His cause of death is unknown.

 

Downtown loses some sparkle

Submitted photo

Frances Gibson Loose, longtime owner of Tuel Jewelers, died January 5 at age 86. For 65 years, she showed up for work, always professionally dressed, until about a week before she passed away.

When Loose bought the store in 1975, she was the only female business owner downtown, and according to her daughter, Mary Loose DeViney, she told another woman in a male-dominated field, “I’m going to do it my way and you will, too.”

She was a member of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce, which named her Small Business Person of the Year in 2009.

Loose was well-known and well-liked and was often called “Mom” by her many friends, says DeViney. “She extended credit to people that others wouldn’t have—and they paid her. She just believed in people.”

People from all walks of life came to the store just to talk to Loose. “I’ve got to talk to Momma,” DeViney heard regularly. “I shared my mom with all kinds of people.”

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Downtown visitors get a parking break

Lynelle Lawrence, co-owner of Mudhouse Coffee Roasters, says business owners hope the holiday parking promotion will welcome patrons back to the Downtown Mall after a stressful summer. Photo by Amy Jackson

Some business owners say the Downtown Mall hasn’t been quite the same since shield-wielding white supremacists and neo-Nazis invaded it over the summer, followed immediately by the onset of a pilot parking meter program that required drivers to pay to park for what was once a free space.

So what better way to welcome back its patrons than offering free holiday parking?

“The timing [of the parking meter pilot] made it so people who perhaps were feeling a little skittish to come down after the summer just kept that feeling,” says Lynelle Lawrence, co-owner of Mudhouse Coffee Roasters, a Downtown Mall institution of 24 years. “The idea is just to allow the downtown area to welcome people back and have nothing be a deterrent.”

The city announced November 14 that the newly metered spaces surrounding the mall would be available at no cost from Friday, November 17, until Monday, January 1, and parking in the Market Street Parking Garage would be free on the weekends for the holiday season, starting at 5pm each Friday.

Lawrence says her coffee sales have certainly declined since the onset of the parking program, and Joan Fenton, chair of the Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville, says that seems to be a trend for other business owners.

“I know that there are a lot of businesses that are very upset by the meters and think it’s a bad idea,” says Fenton, who also owns Quilts Unlimited & J. Fenton Gifts. “We haven’t seen the figures but, anecdotally, people have told us that they don’t want to park because of the meters.”

Local writer and downtown frequenter Elizabeth Howard is one of those people.

“The sun was shining on the meter, so the prompts were a little hard to read and it took me several tries to make it work,” she says, adding that she had to take a few trips back to her car during the parking process, including when the computer system asked for her license plate number, which she doesn’t have memorized. “It was frustrating, plus I was in a hurry.”

Adds Howard, “I would still come downtown, but I would avoid the meter.”

Fenton’s personal qualm is that the rate is too high. “I’m not sure that we’re in a community that will accept a $1.80-per-hour rate,” she says. “At this point, I don’t think it works.”

But Fenton says when the businesses called for help this season, Charlottesville management acted fast.

“The city has been through a great deal since August 12,” says parking manager Rick Siebert. “There have been a lot of hard feelings expressed by a lot of people about what went on, and perhaps what mistakes were made, so I think this is the city partnering with the businesses on the mall to say ‘come on back.’’’

And while the parking meters are a hot topic, he adds, “I don’t think this is all about the meters. I think this is all about the mall and the need for the city to support the efforts of the business community and to remind everybody what a great place it is.”

Siebert says the meter pilot program will likely run through May (the holiday parking promotion ends at the beginning of the new year), and would then go before City Council for recommendations. Despite all the backlash, he says the program has helped improve turnover and create available spaces.

“There are certainly a number of people who are upset, and not happy about the elimination of the free parking, but there are other business owners, property owners and customers that I’ve talked to personally who have talked about how great it is that they can now actually find a place to park on-street without driving in circles, and I think the $1.80 per hour is worth that convenience.”

And he says he’s heard from several satisfied Market Street garage parkers because their rates have decreased since the pilot was implemented—instead of paying $2.50 an hour, it now costs a dollar less with the first hour free.

Lawrence says she expects to see another dip in Mudhouse sales in January, but that happens at the beginning of each year, so she won’t necessarily be able to attribute it to the reinstated meters. For now, she’s enjoying what she calls “this beautiful moment” of business collaboration, where employees are saying, “Let’s see what we can do to create a holiday spirit downtown. This is a lovely place to be and we’ve got you.”

Adds Lawrence, “It’s never been this tight and strong, and the city is right with us. It’s given us energy and focus.”

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Business owners worry as city proceeds with pilot parking meter program

Spring Street owner Cynthia Schroeder started a petition against the city's parking meter pilot program. She says lack of parking will harm her business. Staff photo

While the city is moving ahead with plans to install more than 150 parking meters around the Downtown Mall, some local business owners are expressing their displeasure.

The city intends to contract with IPS Group, a major national parking meter vendor, to install meters for a six-month pilot program and expects to have the program up and running by September, city parking manager Rick Siebert says.

A petition from the Downtown Mall Alliance, which is against the parking meters, recently circulated, garnering about 325 signatures.

Cynthia Schroeder, executive director of the Downtown Mall Alliance and Spring Street owner, says it was easy to get people on board with the petition, but she was unable to speak on its behalf at a City Council meeting because of the lottery process for public comment.

“The people, they just don’t want it, and it’s coming anyway,” Schroeder says. “I would do more, but I don’t know what else to do.”

Since the city has finalized a contract with IPS and is working on the logistics of the pilot program, Schroeder says presenting her petition seems hopeless.

The initiative mainly targets areas directly adjacent to the Downtown Mall between Second and Sixth streets. Of the 157 on-street parking spots included in the program, 97 currently offer free two-hour parking during most times of the day, according to the city’s parking information website.

The metered spots will also have a two-hour parking limit, and will operate Monday through Saturday from 8am to 8pm with a rate of $2 per hour.

The metered parking would make it harder for people to work on the Downtown Mall, Schroeder says, and could also limit the time customers spend in her store for fear of being towed.

“The rotational parking is just not going to work,” Schroeder says. “I think that the metered parking is gonna be the demise of the mall.”

City Council voted 4–1 in favor of the parking meter six-month pilot program in April 2016.

Councilor Bob Fenwick, who called the measure “governance by resolution,” at that time, cast the only dissenting vote.

Siebert says four separate parking studies conducted by the city since 1986 have all recommended the management of on-street parking near the Downtown Mall.

“I recognize that people may have legitimate concerns,” Siebert says, “but we believe that this program will help the businesses and customers of the Downtown Mall, not hurt them.”

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Spaced out: Low-wage earners will feel parking pain

Rick Siebert, Charlottesville’s first parking manager, has experience installing smart meters in Montgomery County, Maryland, where he was in charge of its 20,000 spaces, 19 parking garages and 52 employees. Photo John Robinson

 

The already difficult downtown parking landscape is about to become more challenging in the next couple of years. Major construction projects like West2nd, the Dewberry Hotel and Belmont Bridge promise to further clog streets and decimate an already dwindling parking supply.

And then there’s the pilot meter program coming in August.

Hardest hit will be the minions working on the Downtown Mall whose employers don’t provide parking.

Charlottesville’s new parking manager, Rick Siebert, met March 22 with the Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville, which had an organizational coup and panicked meetings last year at the threat (unfounded, as it turned out) the Water Street Parking Garage might close, to brief the group on the future of downtown parking,

Of particular concern to merchants is the trial run of meters in the immediate mall vicinity for the 157 currently free spaces. The pilot will do away with 97 two-hour free parking spaces and install either meters or kiosks for six months.

At least for now, Siebert reassured the skittish business owners, the validation program will remain unchanged, even as the management of Market Street Garage turns over from Charlottesville Parking Center to Lanier Parking Solutions.

Downtown parking has the “illusion of being free,” says Siebert, but if the spaces are full all the time, that doesn’t help if you can’t find a space.

And for those spaces most in demand—the ones closest to the restaurant or theater or shop—he asks, “Why should we give away our highest value spaces?”

Charging $2 an hour on the street could allow a reduction of rates in the parking garages, where people don’t want to park if free surface spaces are available, says Siebert. If all goes well with the meter pilot, he’d like to make the first hour of parking free in the Market Street Garage and end the validation program entirely.

At present that plan doesn’t include the Water Street Garage because of litigation between co-owners the city and Charlottesville Parking Center. Those parties will head to mediation in late May.

Parking meter bids are due April 5. “We requested equipment to be loaned to us for six months,” says Siebert. The companies likely to provide free equipment “predict the pilot will be successful and that we may expand the program. That’s what those proposers will bet on.”

He says he doesn’t know how much the metered pilot program will cost, but there will be start-up expenses to install the equipment. For the individual meters on the blocks where only one or two spaces are available, new signage won’t be needed, but the blocks that will have pay stations will need new signs to point parkers to the kiosks, he says.

Parking study recommendations suggest paid parking from 8am to 8pm Monday through Saturday.

“I think they came up with a reasonable plan to try it for six months,” says DBAC president Joan Fenton. “If it doesn’t work, it can be adjusted before the busy season begins in October.”

If the pilot is successful, escalating the rate for peak times could be an option. “We can get more sophisticated in the coming years,” says Siebert.

And the parking meter perimeter could be expanded out a couple of more blocks, which would make the streets where many downtown employees park no longer an option.

“The most difficult issue will be to find appropriate parking for people working at minimum wage,” says Siebert. “I don’t think it will be a silver bullet. We’ll try several things.”

Under discussion are park-and-ride lots. Siebert mentioned a city-owned lot on Avon Street that can get bus riders to town in 10 minutes. More problematic is the 20-minute return on a bus that currently runs every 30 minutes.

“When you look at people downtown making little more than minimum wage, to expect them to pay $2 to $3 an hour is not feasible,” says Kirby Hutto, manager of the Sprint Pavilion.

“The metered parking doesn’t bother me,” says Hutto, who says it’s “naive” to expect that spaces will remain free.

What is more worrisome, he says, is that there’s no plan to ease the pain of losing parking in the short term from construction and the uncertainty of the Water Street Garage litigation. “There’s going to be a shortage of parking,” he says. “How are we going to accommodate demand for parking during peak hours?”

The days of the city-owned meter lot on Water Street are numbered with construction of West2nd expected to begin this summer. Also on the chopping block are the 51 spaces under the Belmont Bridge, which City Councilor Bob Fenwick says he’s counted and where many Pavilion employees park.

“We’re already hearing employers say they can’t find people to work downtown because of parking,” says Hutto.

“That is a concern,” says Siebert of the upcoming construction. He’d like to phase projects like the Belmont Bridge so all parking isn’t taken out at once.

Parking is also an issue for people coming from out of town to see a show at the Pavilion. The 75 spaces in the Water Street Garage promised to John Dewberry for his eponymous hotel are “coming out of the inventory I can sell to Pavilion patrons,” says Hutto.

Pavilion-goers need to be able to park, says Hutto, and if all the new parking coming from new developments is for private use, that doesn’t help.

Charlottesville Parking Center owner Mark Brown “actually has some good ideas about how to manage the Water Street space,” says Hutto. “With active management, we should be able to know when there’s open inventory.”

Siebert promises to leave no parking possibility unexamined. He’s ready to talk to churches and the previously uninterested LexisNexis to see if they want to share their lots. He wants to contract parking enforcement. And he’ll work with transit to tailor bus routes for park-and-ride options.

And he’s working on a survey for downtown employers to give to their workers. “We need to find out what time of day they come in and where they’re coming from,” he says.

After a contentious year between the city and Charlottesville Parking Center, and the city and Albemarle County, which threatened to move its courts because of downtown parking issues, everyone seemed to take a deep breath in 2017.

The city is implementing a parking action plan based on recommendations from the four different parking consultants it’s hired since 1986.

That includes hiring a parking manager—Siebert—to report to the department of economic development. “Parking is really a tool for economic development,” he says. “I’m glad this council has acted on the advice it’s consistently received since 1986.”

 

Bye-bye free street parking

The six-month Downtown Mall pilot parking meter program goes into effect in August.

  • Area bounded by Second Street on the west, Market Street on the north, Sixth Street on the east and either South Street or the railroad tracks on the south
  • $2 an hour, 8am to 8pm Monday through Saturday
  • Parking meters or pay stations will take cash or credit
  • The 157 spaces in the area include loading zones and 22 handicapped spaces
  • 97 two-hour spaces will get meters