OGDEN — Paid parking is coming downtown and will be rolled out over the coming year.

During Make Ogden’s monthly open house at Union Station on Wednesday, Deputy Division Manager David Sawyer gave a presentation to a crowd of around a dozen people on plans for the Go Park Ogden system.

“We know that we currently have congestion in specific areas like 25th Street and Kiesel Avenue,” he told the Standard-Examiner afterward. “That’s already hurting business. With the addition of the improvements we’re bringing to downtown — the additional retail that will be at WonderBlock; the additional residents, more people are living downtown; when we build out Union Station, there will be more visitors to the area — that’s only going to make the congested busy areas even more difficult. A managed paid-parking system will help us manage all of that additional traffic in a more efficient way.”

Sawyer said residents will start to see the infrastructure for paid parking downtown installed in the coming months.

“We anticipate that we’ll have our parking support firm in place by the end of the summer,” he said. “This fall, we’ll see some of those kiosks start to pop up. … Most of it will be public education and signage that tell people how to pay with their phone. You’ll start seeing that this fall and winter. All of that will be free, initially, as people learn how to use the system and get used to paid parking.”

Sawyer said he sees Kiesel Avenue and 25th Street — where most of the congestion is — going to paid parking sometime after Jan. 1, 2025.

Ultimately, paid parking will be rolled out in downtown Ogden over the next four to six years.

Sawyer said Go Park Ogden will start with street parking, adding that the WonderBlock area — to be constructed on the north side of 26th Street between Lincoln and Grant avenues — will have a mix of paid parking and parking set aside for residents.

He said that even under the phased system, not all downtown parking will be paid, but there are caveats.

“The Junction parking garage, for the foreseeable future, will be free,” he said. “There’s plenty of capacity there, but we anticipate a lot of employee parking will happen there. Then we have leases with some of the businesses on Kiesel such as Skinny Dogz … and EōS Fitness. In their lease agreements, they have contracts with the city for free parking, so that will have to continue for the foreseeable future as well.”

Sawyer said the city likely will take in “several million dollars per year” from paid parking, the revenues of which will be used primarily to service debts on parking improvements such as the paid parking system and new parking structures being built downtown.

“We know it’s going to be disruptive initially as people get used to it,” he said. “That’s to be expected. We’re going to try and do all that we can to communicate well and have meetings where we’re showing people how to utilize the website and how to use the app. I anticipate we’ll be back here a number of times helping people with that and making it as seamless as possible, both for our businesses and our residents.”

For more information, visit https://www.ogdencity.com/2300/ParkingTransportation-Project.

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