Downtown Overland Park has grown into a well-known regional destination for its seasonal farmers’ market, a wide range of shops and businesses, and community events. The City recently adopted policies to create higher density and mixed-use development within the downtown and recognized the need to think smartly about parking.
Nelson\Nygaard, working with BNIM Architects, developed a strategy to accommodate the future parking demand. Our approach recognized the need to fix fundamentals of the existing system that drove negative perceptions about what could happen. Key to changing perceptions was demonstrating how much private parking was underused and could be shared. We introduced a simple system of incentives that could treat many private lots as one larger municipal facility without compromising private development rights, while also increasing private revenues. Stakeholders also recognized the need to price their overused main street for the first time in decades, and a pricing pilot is now underway.