Friday, March 5, 2010

Bend is different, I tell you

Looks like the city is slowly but surely moving in the direction of possibly lowering parking fees in the garage for downtown employees.

Chuck was in yesterday, and I suggested that they take the second from the top level, or even the second and third levels from the top of the garage, and offer it to employees for a minimal cost. Say, 20.00 a month. If the tags are transferable, I'd think a responsible employer would be willing to buy one or two.

During the daytime, these levels have been 95% empty almost everytime I've ever seen them.

Color code them -- blue levels, or red levels, or something.

Not to say I told you so....well, maybe a little....but I've been suggesting this for years, now.

What about someone like me who is currently paying the 50.00 a month? Well, I'm sure some of us will keep the convenient parking on the lower levels, and others wouldn't. But I'm not suggesting this solution as a money maker for the garage, unfortunately, only as a possible solution to employee parking.


Which brings me to a second point.

I'm certain that some of you think I'm opposed to the garage, the buses, the Tower Theater.

What I'd like to point out is -- my contention from the beginning, and this is my judgment based on being a lifelong resident of Bend-- is that all three of these public 'good' projects would be underutilized.

And I was right.

I can't explain why Bend is so different, but I just believe that we don't get the same results here for public transportation, or parking garages, or public venues that places of similar size elsewhere. Demographics? Isolation? Eastern Oregon culture?

I can't explain it, but I know it's there.

And it seems invisible to the newcomers, and especially to the promotion-ally minded types.

I love to use the garage, for instance, but I've been given to understand that they manage to sell only about half as many tags for it as they expected. The buses look to me to be mostly empty.
I doubt the day will ever come that the Tower will pay for itself.

Just saying -- the assurances that these projects will be successful by the promoters need to be looked at a bit more skeptically. Taking into account the different culture here -- the cowboy, logging, I'll drive everywhere and park where I want--culture.

I always say we have a thin veneer of sophistication here, and while that gets most of the media attention, the underlying culture is much more conservative -- in lifestyle and politics -- than people seem to think.

8 comments:

H. Bruce Miller said...

"I can't explain why Bend is so different, but I just believe that we don't get the same results here for public transportation, or parking garages, or public venues that places of similar size elsewhere. Demographics? Isolation? Eastern Oregon culture?"

In regard to transit it's all three, I think -- plus the sprawling way that Bend has been allowed to develop, which makes it almost impossible to design a really efficient public transit system. Everything's about 10 miles away from everything else, it seems.

On the parking garage, I suspect a great many people don't use it simply because they don't know it's there. Or they're aware of it in a dim sort of way, but don't have a clear idea of where it is, what it costs, etc. Maybe the city and the downtowners need to promote it more.

H. Bruce Miller said...

I've talked to people who are knowledgeable about the theater business and they tell me the Tower's big problem is its size. It's not big enough to attract big-name performers who would command high ticket prices, and with the level of performers it does attract it can't charge enough for tickets to cover its nut.

Duncan McGeary said...

That's just it. A certain amount of promotion is to be expected, but Bend is a higher hurdle, probably because of the boom town nature of it.

I bet if you went to a town like Albany or Medford, the average resident has been in town much, much longer.

I know that 22 years ago, when I'd owned Pegasus for about 4 years, it seemed to me that EVERYONE knew who we were and what we were about.

Now? Oblivious.

I have to think that's unusual, even in out overall transient culture...

Duncan McGeary said...

The Tower. Isn't that just another way of saying it isn't commercially viable?

Isn't that the reason that no one bought the white elephant in the first place?

Give them credit, after some false starts and problems, they fixed up a nice place, and no commercial venture could've ever gotten their enterprise funds back.

But even fixed up, it's not paying for itself. So, that's fine if our community wants to support it, but don't pretend it was ever going to pay for itself.

Duncan McGeary said...

Any non profit that requires constant heavy lifting, will survive as long as there are people willing to do the heavy lifting.

Often the originator -- or the original generation -- wants to pass on the burden, and their isn't enough support.

(Film festival? Cascade Music?)

dkgoodman said...

The last place I lived had 50,000 people and a transit system that worked... but it was in a county with a quarter million people, next to very large counties. I think the reason it won't work here is what you mentioned: isolation. There just aren't enough people here to support it, and not enough places to go outside the core.

I think having a transit system here is a great idea... but only AFTER vital services are covered. Like, I don't know, maybe having a fire department that's staffed well enough to KEEP HOUSES FROM BURNING DOWN! But that's just me.

Duncan McGeary said...

Dave,

Yeah, I think there is much more to synergy than people think. They just don't take into account the outlying populations, the interstates, the larger transient institutions -- colleges, military bases.

If you go one hundred miles in any direction from Bend, you hit sagebrush or pine.

We DO get tourism, which I think saves us, and we DO get retirement --- but these provide lots of minimum wage jobs, and are seasonal.

H. Bruce Miller said...

"If you go one hundred miles in any direction from Bend, you hit sagebrush or pine."

Hell, if you go FIVE miles outside of the Bend-Redmond corridor you hit sagebrush or pine. This truly is The Middle of Nowhere.