The Deschutes County Board of Commissioners will no longer seek to redevelop Worrell Park to add 67 parking spots at the expense of some of the land at the neighborhood park. In January commissioners asked staff to develop a $2.5 million request for proposals to create the parking spaces. Some Deschutes County residents pushed back with the website, saveworrellpark.com, hosting events in the park and writing to commissioners asking them to explore other options.
Commissioners decided to expand into Worrell Park based on an analysis from 2019 that concluded the parking at the Deschutes County Campus — which includes the courthouse and other government buildings — was strained and would only get worse with planned expansions to the campus. A more recent analysis, however, says the county can provide parking to employees and visitors at the campus with better managed parking rather than new spaces.
“What we find is the general unrestricted parking that’s available is getting pretty full,” Joe Bessman of Transight Consulting told commissioners at the board’s meeting on Dec. 7. “But I want to pause there, because the one category, the fleet parking, is the one category that’s not coming onto campus and leaving, that’s the category that’s not moving.”
Parking is considered “full” when it’s at about 85% capacity, Bessman said. The analysis found that “general” parking spaces often exceeded 85% full at the peak hours of 11 am, that permitted parking spots neared 85% and visitor and fleet parking spots were between 60-70% full. In total, about 75% of the campus-wide parking spaces were full at peak hours.
The analysis concluded that additional parking spaces weren’t needed, but there were several ways to make the parking more efficient. It recommended the campus update its signage on parking spaces to make sure they convey who is allowed to park where, offer accessible routes to parking for staff and visitors, explore potential alternative transportation options like cycling and to assess future growth needs and allocation priorities between visitors, staff and fleet.
Advocates to keep Worrell Park as-is argued it’s one of the few pieces of nature downtown, and that its placement on a lava flow with natural vegetation is a unique natural amenity that couldn’t be replaced if developed for parking.
“It’s really a very unique, special part of Bend and once you start disturbing it, it would be gone forever.”—Patti Adair
“It’s really a very unique, special part of Bend and once you start disturbing it, it would be gone forever,” Commissioner Patti Adair said. “I was really happy. Parking is parking and there’s a lot of different places where we can park and figure out better spots to park.”
Commissioners brainstormed what additional parking would look like in the future. Though it found enough space now, future growth will likely increase the need for more spots. Adair asked staff to look into potentially pairing a new parking project with workforce housing and potentially building condos atop a two-story parking structure.
This article appears in Dec 14, 2022 – Dec 20, 2023.
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