Charging for Parking at Regionals.

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by Ricky Q.

Yea, but that won't happen. The venues run the parking lots, not FIRST. To get free parking at events, regional planning committees need to get enough money to cover the cost of buying out the lots from the venues for that weekend.

Yeah, I don't understand the whole thought of "You own our arena for the weekend, but we own the parking lot for the arena for the weekend"

In that case Parking Lot does not equal arena.

But since you got the arena, what are you gonna do without a lot?

I think a regional planing committee should stir things up (in a big city event to make the most waves and be logistically feasible) by saying, sure.. we'll pay to use your arena but we're gonna tell everyone not to park at the venue and when you don't make money from parking maybe you'll make Arena include parking lot in your costing.

Seriously, who else uses the parking lot at most events during a FIRST competition other than FIRST competitors, or people who are coming to see that specific event. Sounds like just another way the Venue is trying to squeeze money out of a non-profit organization not taking that non-profit fact into account.

(Note that this is not taking The Championship event and other such places into account where there are multiple venues on one site, and multiple FIRST/non-FIRST activities going on with one shared parking lot)

Also, Ricky.. what do you mean by "Buy out the lots" Do you mean a guess of how many cars are going to use the lots, or the full capacity. Because i have never see a parking garage at a FIRST event completely full with the exception of the one in New Haven in 2002 but that parking lot was small to begin with and was not a parking lot designed just for the venue, but parking for the city of New Haven as well.

Bottom line, it may be of the interest of a regional committee to look into the numbers of cars that they had the last year for parking and just pay that amount for the upcoming year.

I would never pay the whole 10 dollars for every spot in the venue parking lot to make it free for guests. That's not worth it realistically.

[Rombus]

Also one more note:
Not all lots around a venue are controlled by that venue, at Buckeye, most of the parking around the cleveland convocation center is controlled by various city parking companies. i was paying a 1.50 a day to park at a "Slotlot" (Lot where you put your money in a slot by the enterance) across from the C enterance. Not exactly the safest place to park, infact i think someone from Delphi ELITE got there car broken into on the second day, but it was cheep and close.

Your just trying to stur up debate threads arent you sandrag?

[Koko Ed]

If the event is held within the city limits there is usually limited parking space and parking is pretty pricey ( I remember a few years ago going to the New England Aquarium and paying $12 to go to the aquarium and pay $22 for parking). It may not see, fair but often parking lots are seperate businesses from the venues and if they're running a business they could really care less about the spread of the good works of FIRST for the sake of their business.

[KathieK]

Venues contract with parking garage companies. They charge for parking. It is how they make their living. I may not like it but it is legal and I cannot begrudge them their living.

Regional Planning Committees do their best to get reduced rates for parking (it is something I fought long and hard for for the last 6 months). If anyone can find me a sponsor willing to donate enough money to pay for all the cars that parked in Hartford for the four days please let me know ASAP so I can book them for next year. But I think I would rather get us sponsors to donate towards the regional or towards developing and sustaining teams rather than to pay for our parking.

[KTorak]

GLR parking was Free I do understand why a venue would charge parking...considering the number of people over a 3 day period is alot. I'd rather pay $5 to park and get cheaper food :/

If you want to discuss expensive parking though...Most places in Atlanta are $20/night.

[Greg Perkins]

At BAE, it was something like 14 bucks to park in the "center of NH parking garage". This is rediculous, I was only there for like 4 hours and still had to pay an "all-day" fee. I remember back in 04 on saturday they used to have free parking at the garage, but this time it was "event parking...$14". I could see 8 bucks but 14 is overboard.

[Billfred]

Historically, parking at the Palmetto Regional has been free.

That parking, however, is at the Coliseum parking lots--the busiest lots on campus, particularly for commuting students--making your free parking more of a hunting license. (But hey, it's good practice for college.)

Luckily, USC purchased a bunch of land, some of which will become commuter parking, so hopefully the issue will be reduced in coming years.

[Jack Jones]

Let me see if I got this right. Most of you have your education paid for by the taxpayers. Most have corporate sponsors paying tens of thousands of dollars on your team. You have teachers, engineers, parents, and volunteers donating their time. You have the ChiefDelphi forum, and you use it to complain that the rest of the world owes you even more because you are special.

Meanwhile, as we all have observed, many, if not most of you, have a cell phone, a laptop, and/or an I-Pod to keep you entertained and in touch with all who are special like you.

Never mind that the entrepreneur has their own mouths to feed and taxes and insurance and employees and a mortgage, they owe you a break on the outside chance you will cure cancer or aids or eliminate world hunger.

The webcasts and the websites come streaming for free into your 3.4 MHZ Pentium 4, with dual 100 Gig drives, water cooled, and the obligatory neons- so why should you tolerate the injustice of having to pay to park your Beemer.

Of course, I exaggerate – but some of you need a reality check! You have soldiers your age protecting your freedom so that you can play robot games. Their spouses and parents back home pay to park every day.

[Jim Schaddelee]

last year at the Mid West regional the parking at the venue was $8. per day but our hotel was $50.for my truck and $50 for our trailer per day .needless to say we didn't stay at that hotel this year.

Jim

[GeorgeTheEng]

Unfortunately, I think a lot of people are assuming that this is something FIRST can negotiate easily. I didn't take a hard look, but in my years in FIRST, I've noticed that free parking is more often then not provided at venues where there is more control over the entire event (i.e. colleges).

There are 2 issues that never seem to go away and can be very hard for a planning committee to deal with... Parking and Food. In for-profit venues both of those are usually contracted out by the venue owner. As part of those contracts they are provided certain things such as exclusivity rights (usually for food) or the automatic right to charge for parking. The regional committees can try to work with them. In the case of NJ, the regional committee managed a deal where they paid for the parking. But that can be depenedant on the area, the number of teams, and the level of sponsorship.

And given that a FIRST event provides no ticket revenue, explain to me how FIRST has a good leg to stand on trying to negotiate things like parking? For that matter, at most events we are dealing with Urban areas. In urban areas, at least on the East Coast, 99% of parking is pay parking.

I know from experience that parking and food are 2 issues that Regional committees always struggle with and the results do not always make everyone happy.

[MrForbes]

From my very limited experience of attending two regionals, it appears that parking charges are different everywhere....in Phoenix we got in free on Thrusday, and paid Friday and Saturday (although the school district vans parked free all 3 days). at Davis parking was $6 on school days and free on Saturday.

In the big scheme of things, parking was a very minor issue....and parking at the venues was very affordable compared to when we were sightseeing Wednesday in San Fransisco!

[Katie Reynolds]

Between $8 and $12 in parking garages at the Milwaukee Regional. In one $8 lot, if the mistook you for a MATC student, they only charged the $4 student parking rate on Friday and Saturday. In the $12 lot, it was that much per parking space so if you had a bus, it was $24-$36. A truck pulling something like, oh, a large grill was charged $24 as well, but only after the owner of the venue became upset that a team was grilling out in that (rather empty) lot - before that, it was $8 for the bus and truck/grill.

[Ricky Q.]

Originally Posted by Elgin Clock

I think a regional planing committee should stir things up (in a big city event to make the most waves and be logistically feasible) by saying, sure.. we'll pay to use your arena but we're gonna tell everyone not to park at the venue and when you don't make money from parking maybe you'll make Arena include parking lot in your costing.


Also, Ricky.. what do you mean by "Buy out the lots" Do you mean a guess of how many cars are going to use the lots, or the full capacity. Because i have never see a parking garage at a FIRST event completely full with the exception of the one in New Haven in 2002 but that parking lot was small to begin with and was not a parking lot designed just for the venue, but parking for the city of New Haven as well.

Your first point is what our idea was this year, the parking charge our venue wanted was not even close to a good price, so we decided that teams would be ok on their own and find the cheaper parking around the arena. Many of them did and the $12 dollar lot that the venue owned across the street was mostly empty the whole time.

For the whole buy out the lot thing, what I meant is the price that our venue wanted per car to go into their lot was outrageous. And this lot wasn't a garage or anything, and it was almost the perfect size that it would have fit most of the cars and busses coming to this event, which is why we were looking at the whole thing.

It is just something we could not get done in our negotiations this year.

[Bill Moore]

Originally Posted by Katie Reynolds

A truck pulling something like, oh, a large grill was charged $24 as well, but only after the owner of the venue became upset that a team was grilling out in that (rather empty) lot - before that, it was $8 for the bus and truck/grill.

A FIRST tailgate? WHAT A WONDERFUL IDEA!!!

What team was that Katie? I want to hang around with them in Atlanta (especially at lunchtime)!

[Kevin Sevcik]

Elgin,

Many regionals are already negotiating hard with venues to get discounted rental fees and all sorts of breaks. I know for a fact that the LSR regional gets a decent break on the fees for the Reliant Arena. Threatening a venue with a boycott is just plain stupid. They do not, in fact, have to accept FIRST's custom or give us discounts or anything. As for buying out a lot, most venues have a set fee for buying the entire parking lot for your event. No estimating how many people are parking there, cause you could be wrong or anyone off the street could wander in and park at that point. The other option in some places is buying parking tags for every team and distributing them. In which case you still don't have free parking for the public. Both of these options can get very expensive. In the $10K range. So if you happen to have $10K laying around, feel free to donate it to the event of your choice to cover parking. Otherwise just put the extra $100 or so in your team's budget to cover the parking fees and let the regional planning committees worry about the already difficult enough task of pulling off a regional as cost effectively as possible.