ParkHouston
News / Press
Plan for Parking Money Forming for Midtown, Museum District
November 4, 2022 -- Two parking districts created in the Museum District and Midtown for public spaces are starting to amass healthy bank balances. By January, the management districts responsible for spending the money on local projects, such as bike racks, safer crossings and police overtime, finally could have the funds.
City Council is expected in December to approve agreements with the Greater Southeast Management District and the Midtown Management District, paving the way for the districts to use money currently being held by ParkHouston, which oversees about 10,000 paid parking spaces citywide. The agency also enforces other parking rules, such as commercial vehicle parking and permit parking in certain neighborhoods.
For fiscal 2022, which ended June 30, Museum Park had $20,541 in collected revenue. Midtown had $105,627, according to ParkHouston. Both are expected to collect more in fiscal 2023. Projections have the Museum Park district raising $51,810 and Midtown $170,502 by the end of next June.
“We are now seeing a return to pre-pandemic parking,” said Maria Irshad, assistant director for ParkHouston, part of the city’s Administration and Regulatory Affairs Department.
The agreements with the management districts allow them to retain 60 percent of the revenue raised after 6 p.m. The money can be used for improvements within the city-established parking benefits district, such as landscaping, sidewalk improvements, bike racks and safety improvements.
The Museum Park district, just north of Hermann Park, was created in 2019, followed by Midtown, which developed a smaller parking area centered around the bar area south of the central business district near Bagby, approved in April.
The parking districts are the second and third created by the city, following the 2014 creation of a parking district along Washington Avenue. Though it still collected money, the Washington Avenue parking district was unable to agree on projects after 2018, and had been dormant because of board vacancies during the pandemic.
Since June, however, the board has been re-established and planning to spend some of the roughly $200,000 it has accumulated. Officials in September approved the district’s first project in more than five years, agreeing to spend $30,000 on the installation of 10 cameras police can use to monitor vehicles along Washington.