What's up downtown? Parking rates

So there's an interesting side effect to downtown's booming office-space market — interesting, that is, for folks who park downtown. According to an annual central business district parking survey (yes, apparently there really is such a thing), increased occupancy in downtown office buildings is pushing the price of downtown parking up. Last year, the median price for a reserved downtown parking space was $225 a month, up 6 percent from 2005; for expensive spots, the rates jumped 14 percent, to $280 a month. In some cases, the cost of parking is about to increase even more dramatically: At the Houston Club garage, for example, rates will go up as much as 45 percent next month.

The increases are tied in part to the decrease in vacant office space — the vacancy rate among top-class downtown offices is only about 9 percent — and in part to the fact that many garages had kept old rates for a long time. The Esperson Building garage is one that recently raised its rates after the building changed hands: "With the sale of the building, we just had a need to bring it up to somewhere close to market rate," Khalis Rashaad, facility manager for the garage, told the Chronicle. We imagine it doesn't hurt that the Esperson garage is full.

The good news: Compared with other cities, parking in Houston is still cheap. The average price for an unreserved downtown spot here was $145 a month last year, a few dollars below the national average of nearly $154 and way, way below the $574 monthly average in New York City. But there's demand here: Houston is among the top cities in the U.S. in terms of the number of downtown parking garages with waiting lists.