City of Phoenix looks to hire consultant to study downtown parking

PHOENIX (FOX 10) - There are those who walk, visitors who take public transportation and people who drive into the city and park.

"About five-billion dollars in capital has come into downtown in the form of new high rise buildings -- you see new apartment complexes that are going around -- all of those things are driving increase for demand in parking," Alan Stephenson said.

City of Phoenix planning and development director, Stephenson says Phoenix has been incredibly successful over the last several years tracking economic development and it's time to prepare for more growth.

"The City of Phoenix planning and economic subcommittee voted to recommend approval to allow staff to issue a request for proposal to hire a consultant to study downtown parking," he said.

The hope is to determine the current number of public and private parking spaces available downtown and also look at what's the demand for the future.

"When the reality is you can have a lot of shared parkings, so that it's maybe used for offices during the day, but it's used for bigger events -- baseball games in the evening, restaurants, art activities that are downtown -- there's a good way to share parking," Stephenson said.