KALISPELL – The Kalispell City Council held a public hearing on Monday night to hear concerns over a plan to increase parking in downtown.
The council heard possible ways to reconfigure the streets last month in order to provide more parking after the Kalispell Downtown Plan identified a desire to increase parking downtown for employees last year.
Unlike Missoula, Bozeman and Billings who have parking garages Kalispell Senior planner says would like to avoid significant construction costs by integrating angle parking on one side of some wider streets.
A months-long analysis by the Kalispell Public Works Department presented to the council last month revealed changes to Third and Fifth Streets could generate up to ten or more parking spots.
Based off of the findings, the council directed further analysis as they also look at possibly changing some from two-hour to all-day parking for employees.
“One of the issues we are looking at is whether they should be two-hour or all-day parking for employees. We are going to go back to the Parking Committee and talk to them about that once again talk to some of the neighboring property owners and see if there are some concerns with that,” said Kalispell Senior Planner Jarod Nygren.
-Nicole Miller reporting for MTN News
