John Tuohy

john.tuohy@indystar.com

The Phoenix Theatre's recent announcement that it was moving from the Chatham Arch neighborhood after 28 years underscored a problem that residents of this quaint enclave near Downtown have long fretted over: A torrent of commercial and residential development depleting available on-street parking.

Homeowners in the historic neighborhood said employees and customers from the thriving Mass Ave. night life and retail district are increasingly snapping up parking on their narrow side streets lined with gabled cottages and small front yards.

“And it’s just going to get worse,” said Sally Spiers, president of the Chatham Arch Neighborhood Association. “Because there isn’t enough parking for the demand right now, and so much more new development is coming in.”

As a result, the association might request residential parking permits from the city, which would restrict parking to residents and their guests on certain streets. Drivers who don't have permits could be ticketed by police. But it could be an uphill battle as the city has strict standards for issuing permits to whole neighborhoods, or even large segments of them, especially when many homes have garages.

Only one neighborhood — Lockerbie Square — has widespread permit parking. Most other permits are handed out on a case-by-case basis to homeowners who demonstrate a parking "hardship," said Nathan Sheets, an assistant administrator for the Department of Public Works. Officials are reluctant to place restrictions on public rights of way because permit parking has the potential to create more problems than it solves.

"Lockerbie got their permits about 15 years ago, but we've changed the policy since then, and it probably wouldn't qualify today," Sheets said.

In Lockerbie Square, residents along several streets, including New York, Vermont and East streets, are issued permits, said Steve Wagman, past treasurer of the neighborhood association. Each permit holder gets two guest passes, and more than one permit per household can be issued, depending on the number of cars at the home.

Last year, 575 residential parking permits and 638 visitor passes were issued countywide, accordng to Department of Code Enforcement spokesman Dimitri Keyser.

In Chatham Arch, residents complain that visitors to Mass Ave. are noisy, create litter and sometimes crash their cars into private or city property. Some homeowners occasionally reserve spots in front of their homes with orange cones in the street. Others say they have to park several blocks away if they come home late at night, because the side streets are full.

“People here are really motivated about getting something done,” said John Mendoza, who said he was in contact with DPW last year.

The parking is so scarce that the Phoenix Theatre cited it as a primary reason last week for moving from their current location at 749 N. Park Ave.

Theater producing director Bryan Fonseca estimated that customers who give up on finding parking cut into the Phoenix's annual revenues of $840,000 by about 3 percent. The theater has an eight-spot parking lot for staff but no parking for theatergoers. Fonseca said he has heard from theatergoers who drive around and around, then give up on looking for parking.

Construction is scheduled to begin this year for Montage on Mass, a $50 million, five-story development that will bring 236 apartments and 37,000 square feet of retail to the 500 block of Massachusetts Avenue and increase the district's retail space by about 25 percent.

Across the street is Millikan on Mass, which will add 64 apartments. Nine Irish Brothers will occupy 15,000 square feet of retail space at ground level.

Apartments and lofts are rising, too. Circa, at 617 N. College Ave., with 265 planned apartments, is partially open and under another phase is currently under construction. Park 10, with 84 condos and townhomes, is being built at Broadway and 10th streets. And Indianapolis Public Schools is looking for a buyer to develop the 11-acre former Coca Cola bottling plant on Massachusetts Avenue east of College Avenue.

Though the new residences have parking garages, many residents choose not to pay for spots and take their chances parking on the street, which depletes the supply even more, Spiers said. Parking meters along Massachusetts Avenue also send drivers to the side streets to avoid paying for a space.

Spiers said the flood of new businesses has made Mass Ave. a destination all day long.

“The parking starts on the side streets at 9 a.m., when the first employees come in,” she said. “Then at 5 p.m., the customers start coming in.”

City-County Councilman Zach Adamson, a Democrat who represents the neighborhood, said he normally would oppose permit parking but said Chatham Arch is the exception.

"This is a parking crisis that is largely created by the city, and I think they are responsible for solving it," he said. "The city has given these longtime residents the shaft."

Republican Councilman Jeff Miller, who has sought permits in the past for the Fountain Square neighborhood, described the Chatham Arch situation as a looming "mess."

"This has been an issue for some time, and sooner or later it is going to come home to roost," Miller said.

Sheets said the city generally doesn't offer permits to homes or neighborhoods that have ample off-street parking, such as a garage or carport. And in Chatham Arch, most residents do.

"It should be for people who have no other parking option," Sheets said, adding that blanketing a neighborhood with permit restrictions could have unintended consequences. Because the permit holders are restricted to one guest pass, it could cause difficulties for homeowners who hold large gatherings with several guests.

"If you're having a dinner party for 25 people, they'll have to park outside the zone," Sheets said.

Mendoza said he did a survey of 159 homes and found that 118 have garages, and 64 of those garages have room for more than one car. But he said that leaves 41 households without a garage. In addition, 119 of the 159 households surveyed have more than one car. Mendoza calculated that residents in that survey needed 83 on-street parking spaces. d on the street. And only about half the households were counted, so the number is more likely double that.

Sheets said DPW most commonly has issued permits on a "parcel-by-parcel" basis. If residents don't have a garage and parking in the neighborhood has become tight, they can get permits to park in front of their homes.

Mendoza conceded that getting permits could be tricky. He said his neighbors probably would be more inclined to support an all-or-none approach because it would be too contentious to sort out which streets should get them and which shouldn't.

"Unless they declared a buffer zone directly off Mass Ave. or something simple like that, it will never happen if they say, 'You decide,'" Mendoza said.

Call IndyStar reporter John Tuohy at (317) 444-6418. Follow him on Twitter: @john_tuohy.