BILLINGS — A busy Saturday put the Amend Recreation Campus to the test, with events packing all three facilities at once. The crowds also exposed a problem outside the venues: not enough parking when the campus is at its busiest. Now, the city is looking at options to add more.
Watch the full story on parking at the ARC:
The Amend Recreation Campus stretches across three facilities, and last Saturday, all three were busy at once.
"We knew that there was going to be crazy busy," Facility Supervisor Chris Martin said Thursday.
Thousands packed the campus. Martin said it gave the city a chance to see where the campus could feel the pressure.
"It was a good test to see what we needed and what solutions will be needed in the future," Martin said.
One of those needs is parking. And one possible solution could be sitting just northeast of the building.
"We have pat site four to the northeast of the building. It's used as overflow right now, but it is not a full parking lot," Martin said.
Right now, it's overflow. But Martin said he'd like to see it become something more permanent if the city decides that's the best use.
"If that's what we decide to use the site for...then yeah, I would like, ideally it would be a fully paved, functional parking lot," Martin said.
Saturday showed what happens when the available spaces run out. During a major event, some drivers went beyond the parking lot altogether, jumping the curb and parking on the grass. The city parking division reported that 14 tickets were written for illegal parking.
Visit Billings Executive Director Aly Eggart said having all three facilities this busy at once may not happen often.
"The odds that you're going to have all three run in multiple times a year are a little less," Eggart said. "But if you've got two of the three operating in full, that's a big win for our community."
But that's also the balance the city is trying to strike: How much parking does the campus need for the days when it's doing exactly what it was built to do?
"That's the goal of this place. It's big enough to house those events and make them awesome and create user experiences," Martin said.
