Downtown parking solution didn't work

We often brag about being a nation of laws, not of men. 

So we should be familiar with the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Take downtown Augusta in the 1970s.

That was when Broad Street merchants were worried. For 200 years they had cornered the market on commerce. They were the market. By the 1970s, however, the suburbs were growing, downtown's big department stores were aging and talk of shopping malls outside downtown was often heard.

The problem, the merchants said, was parking. Despite its width, Broad Street could get jammed when everyone decided to come to town to shop. And, now that you mentioned it, it was the 1970s and downtown was looking a little old-fashioned.

Augusta did something.

City leaders brought in internationally acclaimed architect I.M. Pei, who added many modern touches, including his sunken parking spaces in the Broad Street median.

The unintended consequence? In building the new sunken parking decks, Pei actually used up spaces for Broad Street's familiar, old, angle parking. The Augusta Chronicle sent out a reporter to count how many were lost, and he reported 768.

Needless to say, the merchants weren't happy. But the city leadership, led by Mayor Lewis A. "Pop" Newman, had a plan: a new, two-level parking plaza at Ninth and Ellis streets that would offer 288 spaces.

They built it so quickly that it opened without permanent guard rails. But open it they did in the fall of 1976.

On its first day, it appeared to be full. Newman was there to welcome the parkers. But things didn't go as planned.

A few months later, large newspaper photographs show the plaza essentially deserted. 

The merchants said it was in the wrong place – not near enough to stores for shoppers and not near enough the businesses for businessmen. And unless you were going to the old H.L. Green's dime store, it wasn't very convenient. One city study said it averaged 20 cars a day.

Ultimately, it didn't matter. Within less than a year, two new malls opened south and west of town and downtown shopping dwindled.

The parking deck was pretty much ignored for the next 30 years before the school board converted the old Green's store into its current headquarters.  

Newman, who lived to be almost 100, said the parking plaza was the biggest blot on his otherwise successful three-term career.

Like most consequences, it was unintended.

Reach Bill Kirby at bkirby@augustachronicle.com.