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Show Sugar House Must Get More Off -Street sprague branched fViyit? Wll JUCCI 5131 llth East St Parking Or Lose Out With the commercial trading advantage they have over downtown Salt Lake, because of their off-street parking, Sugar House merchants to keep that advantage, must increase their off-street parking ever more. Or they're nuts! This opinion, in just so many words, was expressed to the best attended at-tended meeting of the Sugar House chamber of commerce in history ' last Friday by Frank Emery Cox, one of the foremost authorities im the world on business modernization and off-street parking. With chart and picture, with blunt and humorous language and with a vast supply of statistics and figures, Mr. Cox said eastern capitalists cap-italists were eyeing the Salt. Lake and intermountain area as ripe, for spending millions of dollars; toi esr-tablished esr-tablished convenient, decentralized1 centers with plenty of room for-it for-it is wheel traffic even more than foot traffic ' that brings in king-size king-size business volume, he said, and both are in direct ratio to retail busines profits. And unless the Sugar House retail re-tail merchants get on the ball and do something about their inadequate inade-quate off-street parking, none need be surprised, Mr. Cox said, if eastern east-ern money comes into the area and provides shopping centers a mile and a half from here (at the cost of millions) to take away the busi-. ness that is now enjoyed in Sugar House. As he viewd it, the highly trained speaker said, the solution to the Sugar House problem is a cooperative cooper-ative program. He proposed: 1 That the property owner, who definitely has a stake in it if he is to keep his real estate value up, must cooperate; 2 That the merchant, if he is to keep or expand his business, it is vital that, he participate, nnd. 3 That the customer, for whose shopping convenience off-street parking is designed, can afford to pay a nickle a stall while he is shopping in Sugar House. Los Angeles, Hollywood, Seattle, Salinas, Stockton, the "Miracle Mile" in Sunset boulevard in California Cal-ifornia and a dozen other cities and their situations were cited by the speaker, who told of shopping center developments across the1 nation. And, as he followed each point to. a conclusion, Mr. Cox warned: "If Sugar House apathy and ' lethergy and the sticking of your head in the sand continues, you'll ' see a loss just like downtown Los Angeles, Salinas and all the rest, did. You can't escape it." Speaker Cox told the more than 150 persons present at the chamber luncheon at Beau Brummel cafe that modern store fronts and interior in-terior fixtures, are equally as important im-portant as the merchandise stocked in bringing about a sale. He said if property owners make Continued on Page 6L S. H. OFF-STREET PARKING MUST EXPAND Continued irom Page 1 attractive stores, rent them on a retail business volume basis over long terms and provide adequate off-street parking property values val-ues will be maintained and few vacancies will occur. He declared that adequate parking park-ing facilities, according to best surveys, requrie a minimum of three feet of parking area for one foot of retail store floor space and that in many cases a ratio of four to one is desired. He said the absolute- minimum Sugar House should consider is one foot to one foot. He pointed out in his brief pre-luncheon survey of Sugar House that he would estimate esti-mate there is an area of about 810,000 square feet of floor space devoted to retail business in Sugar House. (At the 3 to 1 ratio, that means Sugar House needs 2'j million mil-lion square feet for off-street parking. ) "I warn you, property values will suffer unless you do something some-thing about this problem," Mr. Cox asserted. "Your tennant needs customers; you need the tennants; you. the landlord, your tennant the businessman and the customer all. need parking." Neglect of any one phase of the cooperative program can lead to loss of business, he pointed out. And, he added, all three should pay for it on a cooperative basis. The landlord and the businessman sharing the initial payment and the customer paying not more than a nickel for the priviledge to park nearest where he chooses to shop. The value of a single parking stall to a retail business, Mr. Cox said, ranges from $15,000 to $20,000 per year. He said progressive stores in the east and on the west coast can figure next year's business volume almost in direct ratio to their off-street parking facilities. On the west coast, the speaker said, more than $750,000,000 is being be-ing spent in some 200 cities to solve this very problem of off-street parking, modernization of retail stores, long-term percentage-basis leases. "The automobile industry is still growing. As long as it does, your off-street parking will become ever more acute," he said. "People don't like to ride the bus. You don't like to, so why should they?" the speaker said. "There should be no curb parking. park-ing. Leave all the street to moving mov-ing traffic. Provide sufficient off-street off-street parking so that people don't have to ride the bus or get stalled in streets where cars are over-parked." over-parked." If Sugar House can't get together to-gether on some cooperative scheme to solve the parking problem, Mr. Cox said, next best alternative would be multi-level parking and the cost of that might easly prove prohibitive in this area. |