Are the rumors true?

[High Plains Drifter]

D.I.A. is cancelling all of the summer motorsports events due to the new construction of the parking garage? the Grape vine usually does not lead to me but when I hear the same rumor several times fron different people I have to ask for the facts!

[kirstein]

I may be out of the loop here, but I haven't heard anythging about this. Last year at this time we in fact had to reschedule a months worth of events due to the refurbishing of the Mt Elbert lot, perhaps that info is getting recycled?

[LoCore]

Closest I can find is a story in the Denver Business Journal, dated 5/13/06:


Parking at Denver International Airport is about to get more expensive.

DIA is raising the rates for the terminal garages and economy parking lots to shift demand toward the airport's shuttle lots.

The new rates take effect June 15.

The daily rate for parking in the garages will increase to $18 from $15 and the rate for the economy lots will rise to $9 from $7. The daily rate for the Pikes Peak and Mount Elbert shuttle lots will remain $5.

"The garages and economy lots are filling up on a regular basis during most weekdays," Dorothy Harris, director of the Airport Parking Office, said in a statement. "By raising the garage and economy parking rates, we hope that some of our customers will utilize the shuttle lots more, where we have plenty of capacity."

[kirstein]

Note that DIA recently completed the expansion of the Pikes Peak shuttle lot with the intention that they could keep the Mt Elbert lot closed except for holiday peak travel times. BTW, I used the economy lot just last week and it's already at 9$ a day. Are you sure that story isn't a year old?

I just found that story, it is indeed dated 5/13/2005, not 2006:

http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2005/05/09/daily66.html

[LoCore]

Yup, looks like 2005.

Flying out of DIA Thursday, the garage and economy lots were full, so I had to park in the Pikes Peak lot for the first time--and it was more than 3/4 full. This was at 3:30PM.

BTW, DIA set another monthly traveller volume record in March, with almost 4.2 million travellers. Seems at least possible that Mt Elbert will need to be used for parking for non-holiday travel at some point with that sort of growth.

Maybe if gas gets to $5/gal, the volume of travel will slow :-)

[lundgren]

Dia has several projects starting in June and July that will impact space availability in the garages and economy lots that more than likely will lead to more parking in Mt Elbert. They have the construction of beginning early June (causing a loss of spaces in West Garage and West Economy – expected to take 18 months), a refurbishment of the East Economy beginning early July (causing a loss of approximately ¼ at a time of the lot – will take 3 months), a Moisture Protection Project in the East Garage starting in June or July (causing a loss of 3 levels of 1 mod – lasting through early November).

DIA does not know the full impact of these projects – that will depend on summer travel. It could be we'll simply see a few hundred cars at the very south part of Mt Elbert much like we saw around spring break.