Garage near ballpark is a big loser for city

Sean Holstege The Arizona Republic Apr. 17, 2006 12:00 AM

Phoenix's biggest parking lot is a big money-loser.

Civic Plaza East Garage, which opened in 1998 just north of Chase Field, holds 2,800 cars and cost taxpayers $43 million to build. City reports said the structure would be 90 percent full 90 percent of the time.

Instead, it's three-quarters empty during ballgames, four-fifths empty the rest of the time and loses $3 million a year, city documents show.

"You have a City Council now that would not support building another Garage Mahal," Councilman Tom Simplot said. "As a member of the public, I thought it was ridiculous. It's nothing but parking for baseball."

In the mid-1990s city planners took pains to distance the garage from baseball because Proposition 200 barred the city from subsidizing sports parking.

In draft consultant reports in 1995, references to baseball were crossed out, copies of the reports show. Also crossed out were 2,425 spaces at three nearby downtown garages. Eliminating those from the list reduced the downtown parking supply.

The consultant, Dick Kaku, said the city didn't pressure him to recommend building a large garage, but he did rely on overly optimistic city projections about development.

Paul Blue, a city official whose name appears on documents sent to Kaku, said he doesn't recall making specific edits but did remember trying to "accurately represent the facts about the availability of parking" as errors were discovered.

"It wasn't sized for baseball. It was sized for peak demand related to other downtown venues," said Blue, now deputy aviation director for Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

The Kaku reports calculated parking demand by counting cars on one evening during simultaneous downtown special events.

But some findings were crossed out when they came back from the city development office, where Blue worked. Scratched out were: "Peak usage of each of the existing parking facilities is less than the actual supply," and "Conditions that would create the peak parking demand during evening (sic) and on weekends is not expected to occur on a regular basis."

Another statement that further financial analysis was needed to "assess the cost-effectiveness of the proposal" also was crossed out.