Downtown parking dominates meeting

HOOD RIVER — The May 11 Hood River City Council meeting saw all seven members present, including Mayor Paul Blackburn. The evening’s theme was parking.

Three local developers provided public comment prior to council discussions on the hotel parking pass and in-lieu parking fee programs. Bradford Perron, owner of Thistledown on Oak; Lach Litwer, one of the developers of the Lightwell Hotel; and Pasquale Baron, a developer whose projects include the Hood River Hotel, all spoke on the lack of parking downtown, how hotel guests use the pass program, and who should pay in-lieu parking fees.

City Manager Abigail Elder said, though it’s unclear when the program initially began, it’s been in effect since at least 2014. Visit Hood River, at the city’s request, recently gathered feedback from downtown stakeholders, and said both shoppers and businesses are concerned that hotel guests are occupying spaces for extended periods of time during peak business hours.

The city manages metered parking in the downtown corridor, enforced Monday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. There is a three-hour limit, though users may extend their stay in 15-minute increments by using the city’s parking app, Elder said.

She gave council three options to consider: maintaining, discontinuing, or modifying.

Council ultimately decided to look at modifying the program, taking parking location, duration of stay, fees, and impact on businesses into consideration. Staff was directed to continue working with Visit Hood River and provide another update at an upcoming meeting.

Planning Director Dustin Nilsen led the discussion on fee-in-lieu of parking. The program has been in effect, in varying degrees of success, since 2006 and was last revisited in 2019 as part of the Downtown Parking Study. Nilsen said that a key finding of that study was that the fee-in-lieu option was a barrier to new development; council at that time adopted an interim in-lieu fee of $3,000 per space for both commercial and residential development, to be held in a dedicated fund for future downtown access programs and improvements.

Nilsen said the 2026-2027 proposed budget has funds allocated to review the 2019 strategies, assess their effectiveness, and recommend next steps. It does not include a review of the fee-in-lieu program, but council could decide to add it to the study, he said.

Councilors approved adding the in-lieu program to the study — assuming the parking study is okayed during the budgeting process.

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