It's no secret that the parking spots around the Kootenai County Courthouse and Administration Buildings can be hard to come by. The parking situation can get even worse in the morning hours when the Courts do their jury selections in the Justice Building. These parking issues have prompted the Kootenai County Board of Commissioners to explore building a new parking garage to replace the exsisting surface parking lots on the County Campus inbetween Northwest Blvd and Government Way in Downtown Coeur d Alene. The new parking garage if built would go in along Northwest Blvd. The garage is still in the design phase but the plan as it stands right now is to build a 7 story parking structure which would hold 518 parking spaces.
The Commissioners are also now looking into how pedstrian traffic would flow in and out of the new garage which might also require a skywalk over Northwest Blvd for foot traffic heading into Downtown Coeur d Alene. The County does not want to just build and use this new parking garage itself as the Board of Commissioners has asked the City of Coeur d' Alene and their Urban Renewal Agency(Lake City Development Corp.) for assitance in paying for the project and in return allow the city to use some of the garage for additional Downtown parking which can always be needed. The counties plan states the new parking gargage would cost about 7.8 million dollars to build and no construction start date as of yet as funding is still the key issue.
This project is sure to become a hot button issue with elections just around the corner,If you have an opinion on this issue,Please share it on the Inland Northwest Business Watch Facebook page at-
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