More Parking Slated For Downtown El Paso

City Council wants to attract more people to Downtown El Paso and one of the ways to do it, according to city staff, is to add more parking spaces.

On Tuesday, City Representatives approved removing several reserved parking spaces around municipal buildings and turning them into metered parking spaces.

Reserved parking for municipal judges, some for police officers, and for city health department employees will be converted into metered parking.

City staff is also going to take assess downtown, block by block, to try to reduce loading zones to only one per block, so that they’ll make more room for metered parking.

Because the city owns the streets that surround county building, Mayor John Cook is going to negotiate with county officials about which reserved parking spaces the county should keep surrounding county buildings.

The city will take the revenue from any additional parking meters – and use it for pedestrian amenities downtown, such as trees, sidewalk improvements, additional lighting and benches.

Right now, there are about 1600 parking spaces in Downtown El Paso. The city hopes to add half as much as that.

City staff will draft a plan based on council’s wishes.