Pia Hansen: Don’t let parking fears impound event ideas

I think I’ve figured out one of the main reasons why some civic endeavors in Spokane grind to a dusty halt long before they ever get off the ground.

It’s not fear of flying or fear of failure – it is fear of parking.

More accurately, it’s fear of lack of parking.

Here’s the scenario as I’ve seen it played out countless times:

A group of people sit around and chat; sometimes it’s a meeting, sometimes it’s an informal gathering. Some passionate person begins describing a great community project like, say, a Taste of Spokane event or a balloon festival or a neighborhood barbecue or a church rummage sale or llama races. You get the drift.

Everyone in the group says something along the lines of “Wow, that’s a great idea” and “Wouldn’t it be nice to have something like that in Spokane?”

It’s all smiles until someone sings out Spokane’s refrain:

“Oh, but what about parking? Parking is going to be a huge problem. If we don’t have parking, people just won’t come.”

Screech – that’s when the civic brakes are applied.

No parking? Don’t even think about trying to put on a new event.

It’s a peculiar phenomenon, but I’m willing to bet that parking concerns have sidelined more projects that could have been wildly successful in this town than anything else.

Before I get carried away let me just explain that I love cars. Blame it on me growing up in a semi-socialist country deprived of big gas-guzzlers or whatever, but I love myself a good car.

I know it’s not politically correct, and it would be better for the environment if we all drove something the size and shape of one of those kid cars at the grocery store.

But personally, I’d rather bike than drive one of those battery cars; you know, the ones with the name that sounds like “pious.”

All that being said, I am so incredibly tired of hearing about lack of parking being an obstruction to anything. It’s become a civic excuse.

It happened again at a meeting I was at just the other day, and I found myself wanting to scream:

“It’s all in your head, people, now move on with your innovative and dynamic idea.”

Thankfully, it’s impossible for every music festival and street fair to have its own parking garage or 10-acre surface lot – just imagine what our city would look like if that were the case.

Heck, more than 40,000 people have come to town to run Bloomsday, and they park somewhere.

Of course that’s an extreme example, but most of the time around here it’s absolutely totally possible to find a parking spot.

What’s that? It’s not free to park, you say.

No, free it’s not, and it’s about to get more expensive for longer hours in downtown Spokane.

We can argue from now on until someone gets a nosebleed from excitement about what it’s reasonable to pay to park – we’ll never agree. And even if we did, then we wouldn’t agree on how that parking revenue should be spent. That’s not my point.

My point is that we live in a country where people start driving cars before they begin voting, so let’s just move on and trust that they can find a place to park them as well.