New CRMC-City Parking Partnership Could Benefit Downtown

New parking lot partnership between Cookeville and Cookeville Regional Medical Center will benefit the city’s future downtown plans.

CRMC bought the property on Cedar Avenue to serve as additional parking for the Emergency Room and Urgent Care Clinic. Cookeville City Manager James Mills said the hospital has agreed to let the city use it for downtown parking on nights and weekends.

“We’d like to extend the Streetscape project that we did on Cedar from 2nd to 7th and extend it from 2nd and on down to Broad,” Mills said. “The concern there was to actually do the project the way it needs to be done, is to remove the on-street parking. Of course parking downtown is very valuable, and we didn’t want to end up with a net loss.”

Mills said this new parking lot is about to be completed and the agreement with the medical center creates significantly more parking. He said this opens up the opportunity to continue the StreetScape work, which entails removing the on-street parking, and extending bike lanes to Broad Street which could then connect to the Rail Trail.

Mills said another reason to place emphasis on the new parking will be its ability to make the area more pedestrian friendly.

“This new parking lot we’re putting in allows you to walk directly over to the Leslie Town Center,” Mills said. “Which has quite a bit of parking. There are a lot of people going to be crossing the street midblock, and we’re concerned about people crossing with vehicles parked there with visibility.”