Each evening, when city employees head home and storeowners close shop, the traffic diamond in front of the North Bend City Hall normally provides some valuable parking spaces in a downtown district short on them. But on Tuesday night, drivers heading to the public library, a restaurant or the City Council meeting found themselves forced to leave their cars two or three blocks away - because people attending a concert at the Celebration Center had claimed the nearest roadside spots.

A day earlier, councilors heard the latest plan to solve such shortages: a parking garage at the corner of Virginia, McPherson and Union avenues. The structure, if built, may chip away at one of the largest obstacles to downtown merchants competing with large chain stores to the west of U.S. Highway 101.

At the 90-minute work session, councilors and city staff members described numerous stories about the parking problem in North Bend - workers at the Coos County annex parking overtime in public spaces, storeowners losing customers, even a near-fistfight between two female motorists arguing over a space.

Melvin Lesher, a North Bend resident and one of the earliest backers of a parking garage, introduced a presentation by three members of the Harrisburg company Morse Bros. The manufacturer of prestressed concrete sections is better known for projects such as the expansion of Autzen Stadium in Eugene but also has built several parking complexes in Oregon, including ones in Portland, Tualatin and Seaside.

Zak Perkerewicz, Gail Smith and Pat Hynes introduced two design choices for a parking facility at the Virginia-McPherson-Union site, each one opening into Union Avenue.

Both options initially would include two levels for vehicles, either 78 or 82 on each, and an open ground floor for offices or storefronts. Rent the city would collect from ground-level tenants - $5.3 million over 15 years, by Lesher's estimate - is intended to cover the construction costs and help pay for additional parking levels as demand grows.

"The reason we didn't want parking on the ground level," Lesher explained, "is because we need to pay for this. ... Maybe we only need two or three levels now, but what if it's 2020 and the foundation's paid for and we need more levels?"

With its location barely a block west of Highway 101, the proposed garage is expected to serve a wide range of people: merchants, their customers, county workers at the nearby annex and future tenants of the former North Bend Hotel building, an apartment complex slated for renovation.

Saying, "The county wants to keep its options open," Commissioner John Griffith, one of the audience members, emphasized the need to set aside an adequate number of spaces in any garage for county workers. He also reminded councilors not to neglect the future parking demands stemming from the North Bend Hotel, which is expected to require more parking capacity as some higher-income tenants join those receiving rent subsidies. (Only seven current tenants own vehicles.)

Neither the Morse Bros. representatives nor Lesher offered a firm cost estimate for the garage project, but Smith, the company's sales manager, said similar structures in the Portland area cost about $33 per square foot. Concrete modules account for the half the expense, he added, with the rest covering support columns, walls, electrical work, lighting and ventilation.

Before construction can begin, North Bend must acquire land parcels from the county and at least two private landowners, including a Masonic lodge that owns a building at the site.

As an example of the urgency to make downtown North Bend more car-friendly, Lesher described the experience of Wayne Schrunk, a Coos Bay contractor who bought and renovated side-by-side Sherman Avenue storefronts in mid-2003; one of the buildings remains vacant nearly a year and a half later.

The pressure to accommodate more cars will only grow with time, Lesher predicted, pointing to increasing home sales and real estate prices as a harbinger of more residents and more crowding.

"We've got to get up and get this thing on the road to meet the growth of our city."