Downtown Denver’s evolution to a vibrant live, work and play district is coming with a cost. Parking lots are rapidly being displaced as developers snatch them up to become the sites of new office towers and apartment complexes. Downtown’s development boom over the past few years has driven the loss of thousands of parking spaces in lots that were used primarily by commuting workers.

The result? A better urban environment, most agree, but a tougher task to find convenient and cheap parking.

“As surface parking lots go away, downtown becomes much more inviting and walkable,” said Ken Schroeppel, an instructor of planning and design at the University of Colorado Denver.

“We used to be a car-oriented cowtown that looked at parking as a fundamental right,” he said. “But now, as a big city, we shouldn’t always expect to find cheap and easy parking downtown.”

Indeed, prices for parking-lot spaces are showing their fastest rate of increase in at least seven years in concert with a post-recession spurt of downtown development.

Parking is a case study in the economic fundamentals of supply, demand and pricing.

• The downtown parking supply has dropped by a net of 1,757 spaces since 2010, according to a Downtown Denver Partnership survey. This reflects surface parking lots lost to development, offset in part by garage spaces added in the newly developed buildings.

• As supply has dropped, the median price for an all-day space in a downtown lot has risen nearly 29 percent, from $7 in 2010 to $9 at the end of last year. The cost for garage spaces is up nearly 7 percent, from $15 to $16 during the same period.

• Demand for parking is rising as development brings more workers and residents to downtown. Even though walking, bicycling and transit are gaining momentum, 43 percent of downtown employees still use vehicles — either driving alone or in carpools — to get to work.

Surface parking lots on the outskirts of downtown historically have been a haven for budget-oriented commuters who seek to minimize costs and don’t mind walking several blocks from lot to office.

But look at new buildings in and around the central business district — from LoDo to the Central Platte Valley to RiNo to Uptown — and chances are they have arisen on a site that formerly was a surface parking lot.

Ground was broken recently for the 26-story SkyHouse luxury apartments at Broadway and East 18th Avenue. To make way for the project, developers removed parking lots with more than 200 spaces.

“I came to work one day and said, ‘Hey, where do I park now?’ ” said Encana employee Robin Parker, recalling the time he discovered bulldozers on the site of the former parking lot.

Parker adapted, but there was a price to pay. He’s now parking at a lot across East 18th at $12 a day, compared with $10 at his former lot.

During the 1980s oil bust, when Denver had the nation’s highest office-vacancy rates, parking prices were fluid — trending up and down in correlation with the office market.

Diligent and frugal commuters who didn’t mind a hike could find surface parking for less than $1 a day in outlying lots.

But today’s parking market is driven more by development than vagaries in vacancy rates. Development tightens the market because it brings new demand from office workers and residents.

Analysts note that in many cases, new buildings are installing more garage spaces than the number of spaces lost when they scraped the underlying surface parking.

For example, developer Trammell Crow has about 1,250 garage spaces at its 1900 16th St. office building near Union Station — almost four times as many spaces as in the former surface lots.

“Generally, there is at least two to three times more structured parking in newer buildings than existed on the surface parking,” said Bill Mosher, senior managing director of Trammell Crow.

In theory, that means downtown will enjoy a net increase in parking spaces as more development occurs.

But here’s the rub for commuters: During the day, much of the newly developed structured parking is reserved for tenants of the buildings. The spaces may then open to the public for evening and weekend use — small solace to weekday workers who now must pay higher rates or search harder for outlying lots.

“Public parking in some respects is getting replaced (by reserved spaces),” said Dan Bragassa, a principal with Denver-based lot operator Alpha Park. “Developers are often putting in more parking, but they’re also creating more density and demand.”

Tami Door, president and CEO of the Downtown Denver Partnership, said plenty of parking is available downtown, but perhaps not in the traditional format relied upon by commuters and visitors.

“Often people will say there isn’t parking, but what they mean is that there isn’t parking right in front of the location they’re going to. It may be three or four blocks away,” Door said.

“But it’s becoming increasingly easy to take transit and bike and be a pedestrian,” she said. “If you do have to walk a little farther, we want to make downtown a very inviting environment.”

Steve Raabe: 303-954-1948, sraabe@denverpost.com or twitter.com/steveraabedp