Blog discussion: parking issues relevant to downtown building owners

By Griff Wigley, on February 21st, 2013

From now till the end of February, we’re hosting a focused discussion attached to this blog post on those issues of particular interest to downtown building owners. We’ll start with some of those items brought forth by the dozen or so who attended the Jan. 28 meeting at the Rueb, but if you’ve got something that’s not on that list, be sure to chime in.

If you are a downtown building owner, we want your participation here, whether or not you attended that meeting.

If you are NOT a downtown building owner, you can participate here, too, as builder owners’ concerns and ideas can benefit from a greater diversity of feedback and opinions.

I’ll facilitate and moderate the discussion.

Online engagement   building owners  

7 comments to  (Including 2 Discussion Threads) Blog discussion: parking issues relevant to downtown building owners

• 1
  Griff Wigley says:

  February 21, 2013 at 7:52 am

  One of the suggestions at the January meeting at the Rueb was to revisit the use of parking meters downtown. I think it was David Hvistendahl who said that many Minnesota towns removed their parking meters in the 70s with the advent of big-box retailers and their acres of free parking.

  

  He noted that in his recent travels around the midwest, he noticed that many of the college towns he visited do have parking meters. I recently had dinner in Hudson Wisconsin and noticed that they have parking meters downtown (photos above).

  So let’s discuss the pros and cons of using parking meters in downtown Northfield as a parking management tool.

  (Tech tip: Attach your comments to this comment by clicking on the ‘reply’ link below on the left. You can also reply to the replies of others in a nested/threaded fashion.  No worries about messing up, as I can easily move your comment to the correct spot.)

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  • 1.1
    James Rossow says:

    February 25, 2013 at 11:21 am

    Parking meters is a form of legal extortion. Putting parking meters downtown will change the profile of downtown in a negative fashion. It is a form of municipal violence. Don’t do it.

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  • 1.2
    Griff Wigley says:

    February 27, 2013 at 10:10 am

    Jim, ‘extortion’ and ‘violence’ are two words I’ve not heard in connection to parking meters, Cool Hand Luke (video link) not withstanding.

    

    But you didn’t say why you see parking meters in such a negative light. What do you think will happen? Are parking meters ever justified in your mind? What is happening in towns like Hudson, Wisconsin that worries you?

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• 2
  Griff Wigley says:

  February 21, 2013 at 8:25 am

  Enforcement of existing parking codes was an item of discussion at the building owners meeting and at least one respondent mentioned it ("regular, not sporadic, enforcement of parking time limits") in the straw poll comments.

  There was also discussion of the extent to which enforcement can be made a priority of the City and if so, what the costs would be.

   

  Got a comment or question about parking enforcement? Attach it here by clicking the ‘reply’ link on the lower left.

  FYI, Chapter 78, Article IV of the Northfield municipal code deals with ‘stopping, standing and parking’ of vehicles.

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  • 2.1
    Krin Finger says:

    February 24, 2013 at 11:20 am

    Education & Enforcement: I’ve attended 1 or 2 parking task force meetings throughout my 25+ years ‘parked’ on Division Street. Each one ends the same: final cost breakdown of adding more parking and ‘realization’ that we really don’t have a parking problem. We have an education & enforcement problem. Building owners & Business owners need to continue to educate our tenants & employees where to park. Business owners, Realtors, Lawyers, etc. continue to park right in front of their business/building…sometimes all day….or….they park just down a few spots in front of their neighbor’s place of business. With consistent recognition of this fact & enforcement, our parking issues would be solved. The other problem is that employees don’t know where to park. I recommend an employee permit parking option.

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  • 2.2
    Griff Wigley says:

    February 25, 2013 at 7:21 am

    Krin, good to have a longtime downtown retailer chiming in here.

    Do you think we need hard data on the amount of downtown parking enforcement that’s done each year (eg, citations issued, revenue collected, repeat offenders, etc)?

    I ask because one of the related issues that came up at the building owners meeting was the cost of increased enforcement.

    The Police Department has many tasks for its community service officer(s) to perform, and parking enforcement is just one. I think the owners at that meeting assumed that whatever revenue was collected from parking fines would not be enough to pay for the increased cost of enforcement. And that led to a discussion about parking meters as a possible less expensive method.

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• 3
  Griff Wigley says:

  February 28, 2013 at 9:05 am

  I’ve gotten some parking-related comments to my recent post on the Locally Grown Facebook page wall. Three people said they never have trouble finding a parking spot downtown.

  I’ll copy/paste my replies here for the benefit of others who don’t use Facebook. I wrote:

  Lisa/Kylie/Heidi, thanks for chiming in.

  The problem is that the Council hears also anecdotal comments from others who state the opposite. And some of those comments come from building owners and business owners.

  So what the Council did last fall was two things: 1) directed staff to negotiate buying property for an additional parking lot; 2) directed staff to come up with a parking management plan to minimize the need for ever having to spend more money on a lot or ramp.

  The latter directive essentially means that the Council didn’t feel the need to definitively determine whether or not there currently is a significant parking problem. They just want the current ‘supply’ to be managed as effectively as possible with a written plan as the guide.

  The other aspect to the Council’s directive is to consider the systemic effects of always providing more parking to meet the demand, ie, the more you provide free parking, the more you encourage people to drive and the more you discourage people from biking and walking to get to and from downtown.

  So this is the other element of the plan that needs your input. Regardless of whether you think there’s a parking problem now, what would you like to see done or not done to make downtown Northfield more bikeable and walkable?

  For example, back-in/head-out diagonal parking is being considered. How about painting sharrows on Division? Do you know about these? Would you support them?

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