Here’s some good news for businesses in Old Colorado City and the historic Westside: our friendly rivals in Downtown Colorado Springs are about to spend millions of dollars to screw up Tejon Street between Colorado Avenue and Boulder.
The “Tejon Street Revitalization Project” will do away with diagonal parking, eliminate the center lane, create bike lanes in both directions, widen sidewalks and “provide underground space to accommodate much larger trees and expanded landscape areas.” That will reduce parking spaces in the affected blocks by 45% and force delivery trucks to park on side streets. It will also affect businesses on the east/west streets as well, since parking will be less available. Losing the center lane will likely lead to frequent traffic jams, policing problems, delivery problems and overall dysfunction – all for the dubious goal of wider sidewalks and bike lanes.
The downtown grandees could learn a lot from the OCC simpletons.
Tejon Street merchants and the downtown visitors that patronize them rely on cars, not bikes. As one downtown gallerist told me, “In all the years I’ve been in business, I’ve never seen a cyclist buy a painting, strap it to their back and take it home.”
As one who has frequently biked to and through Downtown, I’ve stopped for coffee, lunch and snacks, but not often for anything else. And parallel parking when I drive downtown? I avoid it whenever possible.
Of course, it’s easy enough to park a block away in the parking structure at Kiowa and Nevada. Unfortunately, the City’s Parking Authority has to fund maintenance and repairs through its apparently insufficient revenues, meaning that the garage is a mess. The main elevators have been inoperable for the last couple of years, and the dreary structure feels unsafe.
Might it make more sense to leave Tejon alone, fix the parking structure and help fund building renovations and upgrades?
The Downtown grandees could learn a lot from the OCC simpletons, who have embraced a very different upgrade along Colorado Avenue. Plans call for narrowing the Avenue, replacing parallel with angled parking (thereby increasing parking spaces!), and enhancing pedestrian safety.
Granted, Colorado Avenue merchant problems differ from Tejon’s, but they have one thing in common: automobile-driving employers, employees and customers.
Tejon between Vermijo and St.Vrain is the beating heart of the City Center. Narrowing it down, reducing parking and widening sidewalks and greenways might make sense to cyclists and aesthetes but maybe not to dorky motorists – unless you include repairing and updating the Kiowa/Nevada garage.
In any case, OCC lives and breathes by remembering the immortal words of Fannie Mae Duncan: Everybody Welcome! We’ve got parking lots, street parking and secret little places where the knowledgeable can park for free. We’ve got everything Downtown has at half the price and twice the fun. You can show up in your red Ferrari or your rusted-out flatbed Ford – we’re delighted to welcome you. And yeah, we’re bike and pedestrian friendly, too … see you soon!
