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The dominance of monthly parking, much of it controlled by City Hall, has led to inefficiences, imbalanced prices and unused capacity, the study concludes.
TAMPA — Downtown Tampa used to be a 9-to-5 business zone where the office towers and sidewalks emptied out at dusk, but a lot has changed over the past 15 years. There are more residents, now, as well as more parks, more big events, more nightlife and more fun.
Downtown parking, however, has not kept up with the changes and is not fun.
"The P-word," Tampa Downtown Partnership director of transportation and planning Karen Kress told about 100 downtown stakeholders Friday. Whenever the partnership talks to a group about any aspect of life downtown, parking comes up "in every single meeting no matter what the subject."
Downtown's parking inventory is still skewed heavily toward the central business district's population of monthly parkers, and that skews the market, creates inefficiencies and leads to a patchwork of mismatches between supply and demand, according to a first-of-its-kind parking analysis from the partnership.
• Downtown has about 24,000 parking spaces. Of that, the city of Tampa controls the largest share — 8,000 spaces — but various private parking operators manage most of the spaces.
• The city charges less for parking than private operators do, with many on street-spaces going for $1.50 an hour, but some for as little as 25 cents per two hours. Lot and garage parking is all more expensive. That creates a preference among drivers for using the street spaces, even if nearby garages have plenty of av...
• At the busiest times on weekdays, some parking is heavily used, while nearby lots have plenty of vacant spaces. At peak times, an estimated 6,000 spaces remain empty. Meanwhile, the city's waiting list for city-managed parking had 4,100 names on it as of last July.
Monthly parking permits, mostly issued to downtown workers, are the dominant way access to parking has been controlled. This results in building tenants leasing more parking than they need, and that makes those spaces unavailable for other uses.
"This is not the way most cities handle it," said Joel Mann, a consultant with Stantec who worked with the partnership on the study.
In most cities, it says, parking is more "closely aligned" between public and private spaces. Here, because the market remains "highly focused" on monthly employee permits, there isn't as much parking available for people who come and go, residents, early birds and part-time downtown workers.
What's more, a 15-year freeze on city parking rates has created a "huge subsidy that private operators cannot afford to compete with," the partnership says. That limits the money they have available that could be invested in better customer service.
Finally, the city has long waiting lists for parking but no costs or controls for them. This allows savvy customers to sign up for multiple lists and block newcomers from getting parking for years, the partnership says.
To address these problems, the partnership suggests that the city reconsider its management practices to correct for price imbalances and demonstrate that there is a market for a broader range of parking options. That, in turn, should spur private operators to adjust their prices and make changes that would allow under...
"It's time to act now," Kress said. "We can't just sit on this anymore. I think we're kind of at that tipping point for downtown."
And it's not just parking, the study concluded. Mobility options such as transit and a "targeted focus on convenience for the end user are key parking system improvements," because they both provide travel options other than driving and expand the reach of the parking system.
"I was very impressed," said Lorrin Shepard, the chief operating officer at the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts. Two years ago, the squeeze created by multi-event days and nights was aggravating some Straz patrons so much that they told the center they were considering giving up their season tickets. ...
All that has helped, Shepard said, and the downtown partnership's efforts promise to help even more.
"This is ultimately necessary to manage the pace of change that's happening here in Tampa," he said. "The good news is I think there are some very easily adopted procedures" — such as the use of apps to find, reserve and pay for parking — "that could really make a big difference."
A 5-day Summer Theatrical Escape for children and teenagers. Under the direction of the creative team from Tim Bray Productions’ Youth Theatre, students will have the opportunity to explore their performance skills, build confidence, and create a unique piece of theatre, ready to ‘Hit the Stage!’ at the end of the week...
Families are invited to watch the final performance at 5.30pm on the Friday evening at the venue.
Comma Coffee will present the Mile High Jazz Band in Hot August Jazz from 8-10 tonight at Comma Coffee Courtyard, 312 S. Carson St.
General admission is $5 at the door; $4 for members of the Mile High Jazz Band Association, and free for ages 18 and under.
Swing-dance lessons from 6-7:30 p.m. are $5 additional.
The 17-member big band, featuring vocalist Sheryl Adams, will play steamy, sultry and up-tempo jazz tunes for a summer night.
For information about live music at Comma Coffee, call June Joplin at 775-883-2662.
For information about the Mile High Jazz Band, call 775-883-4154, or go to milehighjazz.com.
The Nevada Museum of Art presents the 20th annual A Taste for Art wine tasting and case-sale event. A Taste for Art is 6 to 9 p.m. Friday at the state-of-the-art International Game Technology facility at 9295 Prototype Drive in Reno’s South Meadows Business Park.
Tickets purchased before Thursday are $40 Nevada Museum of Art members, $50 nonmembers.
Tickets purchased Friday and at the door are $60, regardless of NMA membership.
Purchase tickets at http://www.nevadaart.org/tickets or the NMA admissions desk at 160 W. Liberty St., Reno. Call (775) 329-3333 or go to http://www.nevadaart.org for information.
Friends of the Carson City Library will hold an “End of Summer Reading Book Sale” from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday in the library auditorium. The public is invited.
Members only may browse the sale from 9-10 a.m.
Memberships are available at the book sale.
The musical comedy “Cathouse Afternoon” returns to Virginia City for a limited run at historic Pipers Opera House after playing to full houses at the Mandarin Garden Red Light Dinner Theater in July 2004 and November 2004.
Performances of the critically acclaimed original musical by Will Rose begin at 7 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays through Aug. 20.
Period costumes are welcomed as audience members are transported into the play, where mystery, hijinks and music are all part of the show.
For tickets, call 1-800-468-2463 or go to http://www.activitytickets.com. Reservations are recommended. Tickets are $20.
“Cathouse Afternoon” is recommended for mature audiences, due to mature subject matter.
Part of the proceeds go to rebuild Pipers Opera House.
Call 775-847-7150 or go to willroseroadshow@juno.com.
Washington's KING-5 reports the state may soon join Idaho and Utah in the fast lane.
A bill raising the speed limit from 70 miles per hour to 75 miles per hour along some of the Evergreen State's highways cleared the state legislature April 10 and is now headed to the desk of Gov. Jay Inslee.
The bill gives Washington Transportation Secretary Lynn Peterson authority "to increase the speed limit in areas that are deemed safe." Interstate 90 was specifically indicated in the bill, but other roads are still under consideration. Heavy transports over 10,000 pounds would still be limited to 60 miles per hour.
If Inslee signs the bill, changes would take effect until 90 days after his signature—around mid-July.
Idaho remains the West's speed demon, however. The Gem State bumped speed limits along I-84, I-15 and I-86 in June 2014 from 75 mph to 80 mph.
While the change in Idaho was lauded online by many motorists, the change resulted in a sharp increase in the number of speeding citations. In the months following the speed limit increase, police handed out around 300 more speeding tickets than during the same period in previous years.
Idaho might not be in the head of the pack for long, though, as one of three Montana bills aimed at raising that state's speed limit from 75 mph to 80 mph—SB 375—has cleared the Montana Senate.
Some enterprises that are happy to put their data in a public cloud prefer to keep the keys to that data under their own control. That’s the message online file sync and sharing services are sending lately.
On Wednesday, EMC’s Syncplicity division announced Customer Managed Keys, a feature that lets enterprises store the encryption keys for their Syncplicity shared data on a rights management server on their own premises. It’s a new option in addition to having the keys stored in Syncplicity’s cloud.
The announcement came just a couple of months after rival Box released its own private key-management feature into beta testing. That system, called EKM (Enterprise Key Management), may become generally available on Wednesday at the Box Dev conference in San Francisco. EKM likewise was added as an alternative to keepin...
Cloud storage can make it easier for employees and partners to get to enterprise data and share it among themselves on different devices, and cloud services already encrypt the data they store. But due to regulatory and other concerns, some organizations want to maintain control of that encryption themselves. Several s...
For Customer Managed Keys, Syncplicity provides rights-management server software that customers can install on their own hardware. With it, enterprises can hold both the data and the keys to it within their own walls. Syncplicity doesn’t have a trusted relationship with the customer storage or rights-management system...
The new option works in conjunction with granular rights-management features that Syncplicity announced last year. They let enterprises apply different access rights per file and per user and even retract access to a shared file, Vijay Ganti, head of product marketing at EMC Syncplicity.
Whereas Syncplicity’s new software runs on a customer’s own in-house hardware, Box’s EKM uses Amazon Web Services’ HSM (Hardware Security Module) appliance. The HSM sits on the user’s premises and is deployed within an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud.
The Customer Managed Keys software is included with Syncplicity Enterprise Edition, which has a list price of US$150 per user, per year but is frequently discounted based on volume, Ganti said.
WATCH ABOVE: Saskatoon man inspired to help clean up community collects 20 bags of trash in three outings.
A Saskatoon man is on a mission to help clean up his community.
Global News first introduced Jesse Boldt back in February. He lives in his van which – for the most part – stays parked beside the gym where he trains in the City Park neighbourhood.
Boldt has been busy picking up trash along the road behind it.
“It was just disastrous,” he described.
Boldt was inspired by the #TrashTag challenge – a social media movement encouraging people to clean up places littered with garbage and post a before and after picture of the area.
Day one of Jesse Boldt’s #TrashTag challenge.
Day two of Jesse Boldt’s #TrashTag challenge.
In just three outings he collected close to 20 bags of trash along just one residential road – finding everything from plastic cups to hedge trimmers.
Jesse Boldt holding some hedge trimmers he found on the ground.
After the snow melts, an abundance of trash is typically unearthed around the city.
“It’s quite noticeable with all the vegetation not leafed out yet,” said Alan Otterbein, design and development manager for the Meewasin Valley Authority.
That’s why during this time of year Meewasin does its part too, with its spring volunteer clean-up campaign – a grassroots effort going on for 38 out of its 40 years of operation.
The annual campaign is a big event for the conservation agency, with roughly 30,000 people participating every year.
“Families, organizations, school groups, classes – that sort of thing – individuals can come as well,” Otterbein said.
As for Boldt, he plans to keep his effort going and hopes the #TrashTag challenge catches on in the community.
While he doesn’t do it for the recognition, he said it feels good to have the community take notice.
“It was just kind of nice to have people come and say thank you and shake my hand or even just a simple thumbs up,” Boldt said.
The Meewasin Valley clean-up campaign gets underway April 22 on Earth Day.
HARVEST, Ala. (AP) — Cody Stewart is done owning a home for a little while. He has lost his house to tornadoes twice in 10 months.
A killer twister wiped out his neighborhood in the epic Alabama storms April 27, causing Stewart $40,000 worth of damage that forced him to temporarily move in with his parents. In his house for less than two months with repairs still incomplete, another tornado hit again Friday, ripping off the roof, slinging it into ...
This time, the damage is beyond repair.
"I kind of expected there to be more storms again this year, but you never expect it to hit the same place twice," Stewart said Saturday as he stood in what remains of his wood-frame home. "I think I'm going to live in an apartment awhile. I'm not superstitious, but it just kind of seems there's a path here and I don't...
While scattered damage was reported elsewhere, the worst destruction was in Limestone and Madison counties, where 190 homes were damaged or destroyed.
The damage included nearly every house in Stewart's neighborhood on Yarbrough Road, located in the Tennessee Valley about 15 miles northwest of Huntsville.
The storms were not as deadly in Alabama this time. Nearly 200 miles south of Harvest, which is near the Tennessee state line, one person was killed in the Tallapoosa County community of Jackson's Gap. Last year, twisters cut a wide path of destruction across the region, killing about 250 people statewide, including at...
Dozens of homes were damaged or destroyed a year ago in his neighborhood, which was left looking like logging crews had come through because all of the trees were snapped and tossed to the ground.
The twister Friday was smaller and didn't cause any serious injuries, but it hit homes where people were still recovering.
Across the street from Stewart, Jason Kerr and his wife lost their home to the April 27 twister but weren't injured. Kerr had just finished demolishing the house, rebuilding the garage and hauling in $5,000 worth of dirt for a new foundation when the latest storm stuck. Their brand new garage was damaged, and they migh...
Kerr dreads again dealing with insurance companies that he said seem to pinch every dollar.
"It makes it hard for the people on the ground who have lost everything," he said. "It's a difficult time for everybody."
That includes James and Judy Hodges, who live up the street on the corner. They just finished $65,000 in repairs to their home and moved back in; now the house looks it was hit with a giant ax that flayed open the roof and ripped off the front of the structure.
"Time to rebuild again," she said as church volunteers helped clear away debris and pick up belongings scattered through the yard.
Longtime residents talk about the 1974 tornado outbreak that wiped out hundreds of homes, killed nearly 90 people and injured about 950 people in north Alabama. Stewart remembers a twister in the early '90s, when he was still a boy. The repeated bashings have left people feeling short on luck, at the very least.
As Stewart left home Friday to drive to work at a tech company in Huntsville, something felt eerie. Forecasters had been warning of the chance of severe weather for days, and he said it was too warm for early March; the sky looked too gray.
"It was just that sick feeling in your stomach," he said. "It was like, 'It feels familiar.'"
Now, with Yarbrough Road hit twice in such a short period, Stewart said nothing will ever be the same there.
Celebrating Irish rockstar Phil Lynott who died on January 4, 1986.
Thin Lizzy frontman and proud Dubliner Phil Lynott died on this day in 1986. We celebrate the beloved music icon by remembering his most popular tunes.
Lynott was born in West Bromwich, England, to an Irish mother and British Guianese father, but returned to Dublin at the age of four where he was raised by his grandmother in Crumlin.
Following a relatively happy childhood, Lynott fronted several bands, most notably Skid Row alongside Gary Moore, before learning the bass guitar and forming Thin Lizzy in 1969. The band had initial success with "Whiskey in the Jar" and then again in the mid-1970s with hits such "The Boys Are Back in Town", "Jailbreak"...
Towards the end of the 1970s, Lynott also embarked upon a solo career and published two books of poetry.
After Thin Lizzy disbanded, he assembled and fronted the band Grand Slam, of which he was the leader until it folded in 1985.
Before his death on January 4, 1986, Lynott had a major UK success with Moore with the song "Out in the Fields," followed by the minor hit "Nineteen."

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