The Sounds of Silence -Plaza Plans Calms Parking Critics For Now — Dave’s Diary

Despite the rain showers more than 100 people braved the weather to gather at the Season Performance Hall and see the presentation of the five potential designs for a Yakima downtown plaza.The power point was essentially a repeat of the presentation made to city council at 9 am but it was also a chance for folks to ask questions, make statements and self serve a little.

The parking plan was also repeated with an added emphasis on the fact that Yakima has sufficient parking--it just needs to be better managed.

Bottom line--I believe most people were impressed and with parking being adequately addresses I personally feel a little more optimistic moving forward that the designs will sink or swim on their own merits without the anchor of parking protestations

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Final observations: we need to do a better job of engaging the Hispanic population, some people just don’t get it, some quick work on repurposing parking from parallel to angle will pay dividends right away, some people just don’t get it, providing adequate options for employee parking will solve much of the problem and I’m pretty sure some people just don’t get it.