Civic Center Employee Parking

The new Arena will be taking over a parking lot of which City/County employees park to get to work. We will lose 119 spaces and 5 handicap spaces. (Not including the several 1 hour parking spots that were available).

Currently Vanderburgh County employs approximately 850 full time employees and approximately 129 people employed by the City, not including the Police Dept.

Events that take place during weekdays at The Centre sometimes draw numbers in the thousands. When there are daytime events happening during the work week at The Centre, Civic Center employees have a very difficult time finding a parking spot in order to come to work. After the 10,000 seat Arena is built, that situation will only worsen. While they are building the Arena, will there also be a number of construction workers and pieces of equipment using the 'back 40'? There are other people that use the 'back 40', i.e. Signature School students, employees from the walkway and adjacent businesses.

Those of us with a one hour lunch period and need to leave for lunch, have a hard time getting back in an hour. Half of that time is spent on getting to and from our cars and the near impossible feat of finding another parking spot when returning from lunch!

Dave Rector sometimes sends memos informing Civic Center workers that there will be parking problems on certain days because of events at The Centre. If there are problems now, what is it going to be like when the Arena is open? We are told to get to work earlier to accommodate this problem. We do not get paid to come in early, just to make sure we have a parking spot to get to our jobs! We are not guaranteed a parking spot when we come to work. We have no designated spots for only City/County workers.

Possible solutions would be for each employee to have a permit to park in a specific spot. Or a well-patrolled parking garage behind the Civic Center. A walk overpass from that garage to the Civic Center would be ideal. Trolley service would also be a good solution for employees to use when having to park a long distance from the office. We know that walking is healthy but no one should have to walk several blocks in snow and ice and freezing temperatures in order to get to work, especially our handicap employees!

The City of Evansville and Vanderburgh County currently rents space in the Civic Center Complex from the Building Authority. Does this agreement include parking spaces? Businesses are required to have a certain number of parking spaces available for employees and customers. Does the Civic Center meet those requirements?