Where's the worst parking lot in Fort Collins?

You may have noticed a new parking lot going in on South College Avenue south of Laurel Street.

The developer, Se7en Structures LLC, filed its application last year to raze a couple houses and build the lot to help the city's "severely under-parked southern downtown area."

The lot will create new paid parking spaces that will be accessible from the alley connected to East Laurel Street to the north and East Plum Street to the south, according to city documents.

More spots are needed, for sure, in a city that generally is low on parking lot space, especially in Old Town.

That got the Coloradoan's news staff thinking about parking lots in general, which led to a long discussion about the lots we all avoid: Those plagued with giant potholes, tight passages, nightmare traffic patterns or poor visibility for oncoming cars, cyclists or pedestrians.

Parking shouldn't be a contact sport, but in some lots that's the chance you take.

The lot at the former Kmart, 2535 S. College Ave., is always at the top of the list for complaints. Once the retailer closed in 2016, the lot was left to deteriorate while awaiting redevelopment as a new King Soopers. That time has come. The old Kmart was demolished several months ago, and the site is being readied for the new store.

But there are still parking spaces reserved for those jumping on the MAX bus line on the west side of the site, where potholes are measured in feet. The long, narrow parking lot is used as a cut-through to avoid parts of College Avenue, but drivers risk losing a muffler if they hit the potholes too hard.

The city has no jurisdiction over private lots, but does on occasion receive complaints about public and private lots.

The city will reach out to the property owner or HOA/property manager and pass on the complaints, said Darren Moritz, street maintenance program manager for the city. Complaints received about city lots will be forwarded to the responsible department, which can hire the streets department to do pothole repairs and patching.

So, now, we want to ask you: Where do you think the worst parking lots are in Fort Collins? Perhaps some tiny lots behind College Avenue businesses?

Maybe your problem lot is in Campus West near Krazy Karl's, where traffic patterns are unclear and there's only one access point.

Maybe it's the King Soopers plaza at Drake and Timberline that's hard to navigate and without a lot of good visibility, or the tiny parking lot behind C&C Liquors/Tecate in Campus West that's made of bricks, which are now all breaking apart. Delineated parking spaces are also unclear, so people often park in the lanes, making it hard to get in and out of the parking lot.

Jump in the comments section at the top or bottom of this story on Coloradoan.com to weigh in. Once we determine a list of lots, we'll have further reporting on what needs to happen to smooth out their issues.

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Where's the worst parking lot in Fort Collins?