Everyone in Uptown has an opinion about the garage on Forest Road. Fewer people have noticed that the more consequential number in this whole project isn't 270, the count of new parking stalls going in south of the Fire District station. It's 123, the number of on-street spaces on Price Road, Van Deren Road, Wilson Road, and Smith Street that are set to flip from open parking to resident-permit-only the moment that garage comes online.
If you live on one of those four streets, the garage's ribbon cutting matters less to your daily life than what happens to the curb in front of your own house afterward. That's the part of this story most people are skipping past on their way to the bigger headline.
What's actually going up on Forest Road
The Uptown Parking Garage has been years in the making, and at this point it's a genuine piece of Uptown infrastructure, not a rendering. It's a three-level structure, one level below grade, sited on Forest Road near the Fire District station at the southern end of Uptown. When it's fully operational it will add roughly 270 public parking spaces, along with public restrooms, EV charging stations, an information kiosk, a solar array, a police substation, historical plaques about the surrounding rock formations, and a stop for the Sedona Shuttle. The city council approved the construction contract in May 2024 at $17.5 million, with total project costs then pegged near $26 million. By early 2026 that figure had crept to $26.4 million.
Jesse Alexander, who represents Sinagua Plaza, put the business case for the project bluntly at the council hearing that approved the contract: "It's time to really support the businesses in Uptown." Colm O'Brien of L'Auberge Resort made a similar point about staffing, noting his property alone has more than 300 employees who need somewhere to park.
Treat "June" as a placeholder, not a date
Here's where a little skepticism earns its keep. This project has had at least three different completion targets. An October 2025 update had the garage slated for completion in May 2026. By the time the city council heard its next quarterly update on January 27, 2026, staff reported the project was about 70 percent complete and anticipated to open in June.
That June target has now come and gone. As of this writing, there's been no public announcement of a grand opening. That's not a criticism of the build, it's just a pattern worth remembering the next time you see a new date attached to this project. If you want the actual status rather than the last quarter's optimism, the city's project page and email updates from the project hotline are more reliable than word of mouth on Van Deren Road.
The math behind the traffic you're already feeling
The city's own numbers explain why this project has taken on outsized importance for anyone parking in Uptown this year. Sedona's physical parking inventory sits at 881 spaces, but a string of losses has cut into that. Lot 1 on Jordan Road was sold to the Sedona Fire District, removing 70 spaces. Lot 8 came out of the leased public parking program ahead of a pending property sale, taking another 23. On-street paid parking lost four more. Combined, that's a reduction of roughly 97 spaces from the supply Uptown had a few years ago.
Once you factor in real-world turnover, the city calculates effective available parking at around 749 spaces against peak-period demand of about 860, a deficit of roughly 110 spaces on a busy day right now. The garage is meant to reverse that: when the full 2026 parking system is operational, the city projects around 1,150 total public spaces, an effective supply near 980, against that same 860-space peak demand. That's the difference between a chronic shortage and a working surplus, at least on paper and assuming the June timeline eventually holds.
The 123 spaces that change your actual routine
None of that garage math touches the four residential streets most directly. The city has been surveying residents on Price, Van Deren, Wilson, and Smith Street, running roughly from Forest Road on the south to Schnebly Road on the north, about a proposed Residential Parking Program. Transit Administrator Amber Wagner told council the plan covers about 123 spaces on those streets that would transition to permit-only, reserved for residents, in part to protect access to homes on streets the city itself describes as very narrow.
This isn't a hypothetical add-on. It's built into the same rollout timeline as the garage, which means the permit program's start date has been slipping right along with the garage's. If you live on one of those four streets, the practical question isn't "when does the garage open," it's "when does my street stop being open parking for anyone who wants to walk into Uptown." Those are two different calendars, even though the city has tied them together.
The cameras are part of this too
Sedona had a public fight last year over Flock Safety license plate readers, which were installed and then pulled after community pushback. That history is shaping how the city is rolling out enforcement technology for the new garage. Staff have confirmed automatic license plate readers are planned for the garage and other city-managed lots, with handheld or vehicle-mounted readers potentially used for on-street enforcement as well. The current draft policy keeps camera data for 30 days, and citation data takes about 20 days to become available for appeals. Council members have pressed for shorter retention and explicit assurance that facial recognition isn't part of the system, since the plate readers are expected to capture rear plates only.
Separately, the city's long-floated idea of converting Van Deren, Wilson, and Smith to one-way streets, meant to improve safety on those narrow roads, is on hold until the garage is finished and its effects can be measured. So even after the garage opens, there's another decision still pending for anyone living on those blocks.
Meanwhile, Uptown keeps feeding itself
None of the construction dust on Forest Road has slowed down what's happening at street level. The Shugrue Restaurant Group, already behind The Vault Uptown and Broome & Orchard, has opened La Vecina, its newest spot, serving Mexican-inspired dishes and margaritas as what the group calls "the neighbor" to its other two properties. A few blocks up in Sinagua Plaza, Open Range Grill & Tavern has settled in with Southwest-style barbecue and a patio that looks straight across the red rocks, popular enough that local food writers have started adding it to their short list of best-view dining in town. The Hudson has also joined the lineup, leaning into chef-driven comfort food and a cocktail program with the same red-rock backdrop everyone in Uptown takes for granted until a visitor points a phone at it.
If you haven't been to a First Friday Gallery Walk lately, it's still running the same way it has for years: free, first Friday of every month, generally 4 to 8 p.m. with hours varying by stop. Sinagua Plaza's Touchstone Gallery and the Sedona Arts Center on Art Barn Road are two of the closest Uptown anchors, alongside Goldenstein Gallery at the corner of 179 and 89A. Uptown also keeps its Halloween tradition intact, with a merchant-hosted trick-or-treat evening planned for October 31, 2026, from 5 to 8 p.m.
What to actually do with all this
If you live on Price, Van Deren, Wilson, or Smith, keep an eye out for correspondence from the city's transit department about the residential permit survey rather than assuming you'll hear about it after the fact. If you're just trying to park for dinner at La Vecina or catch First Friday, the garage will eventually help, but don't build your evening around a specific opening date until the city confirms one publicly. And if the last two years of watching this project move through excavation, blasting, and quarterly updates has taught Uptown anything, it's that the surest way to know what's actually happening on Forest Road is to check the source yourself instead of repeating what you heard at the coffee shop.
Paying this much attention to your own block, the permit rules, the parking math, the businesses opening around you, is exactly the kind of local instinct that eventually matters if you ever decide to buy or sell a home in this part of Sedona. When that day comes, the team at Cindy Chapman Group has been tracking these same Uptown changes from the ground, not from a press release. Schedule your complimentary Sedona home consultation whenever you're ready to talk about what any of this means for your property.