1. There are about 4,400 parking spaces in the Central Business District (CBD) which have a practical capacity of 4,000 vehicles. There are also about 3.8 million gross square feet of buildings with approximately an 84% occupancy rate. This produces a parking demand of about 3,200 vehicles during the peak accumulation period on a weekday.
2. At the present time there is a significant amount of reserved parking, both public and private, which is underutilized and needs to be made more available if the expense of creating additional spaces is to be minimized. There are only about 150 unrestricted parking spaces which are currently unused.
3. Full occupancy of all remaining vacant floor space in the CBD study area will require some 750 parking spaces in addition to those parking spaces which are currently in use. A variety of techniques will be necessary to accommodate this need.
4. Currently, there is relatively ample parking north of Columbus Avenue, while parking is more scarce to the south and east. This limited parking is a constraint on the redevelopment efforts in the CBD.
5. The "Gateway" block, along South Street and Wendell Avenue, is the area with the most severe shortage of physical parking spaces at the present time because there is a shortfall of about 25 spaces in the total number of spaces which are needed to meet the demand.
6. With the addition of those redevelopment projects now in the planning stages, all the parking capacity south of Depot and Fenn Streets will be fully accounted for, so there will not be enough surplus parking capacity to accommodate any additional demand from new development or new occupancy of vacant space in this area.
7. In the long term, if all the vacant floor space in the CBD is to be occupied, the blocks to the northeast of Park Square will require an additional 125-150 spaces, depending upon the number of unused restricted spaces that can be made available.
8. Responsibility for management of the parking resources in the CBD is fragmented so that those resources are not being used most effectively.

Source: BRPC Downtown Pittsfield Parking Study (3/31/99)

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