Oh, how I want to love the Power and Light District! I want to be a patron at every restaurant, I want to go bowling at the new bowling alley, I want Omaha to stop taking all the good concerts and I want to see them at the Sprint Center.
I want all these things, but apparently the one thing I want is even more impossible than getting Radiohead to play in Kansas City: one compact car-sized parking spot.
As a humble observer, the source of my discontent while trying to find a parking space in the P&L on Thursday night came from what should be saving us from this problem: valet parking.
Restaurants lining the Power and Light are taking up the space of five to six cars for their valet stations, blocking potential spots with their lines of orange cones. "We own this lane," one valet told me.
As I looped around downtown, I grew more and more frustrated. There really is no parking near the Sprint Center! There were signs everywhere for $10 parking spots in the garages neighboring the district, which I guess is ok if you are paying $50 for a concert ticket, but what if you just want to get a drink with friends?
I don't have a solution to this problem, or even a suggestion. I am not a city planner or a traffic cop. I don't want to see one big parking lot taking up downtown space that right now seems like it has so much potential to transform into something useful instead of another dead-faced office building.
I'd like to see more people walking in downtown Kansas City, which would take care of some of the parking problems. That's hard to do since living in downtown is either outrageously expensive or non-existent.
I just hope this isn't a consistent problem, and parking isn't the reason that I don't get to hang out at all the places in the P&L where I am willing to spend my money -- money that I am willing to spend on something other than a Focus-sized piece of street for a few hours.
-Web Producer Meagan
P.S. Didn't get a spot either? No worries! We've got pics from the big games on Thursday night RIGHT HERE!
I encountered the same problem, but all I saw were $15.00 spots. Forget it like I did, head over to the River Market for free parking and good bars.
Posted by: Jim Mayer | June 12, 2008 at 06:00 AM