We’ve been a little puzzled lately by the city’s ongoing push to charge people to park on the streets of downtown Columbus.
Sure, the city could make a token amount of money doing this, but you don’t have to look too far back in Columbus history to find that we tried parking meters downtown only to rip them out. We presume meters were pulled up to encourage more people to come downtown to shop, do business and visit attractions.
If downtown Columbus suffered from nonstop traffic snarls and motorists had to circle endlessly block after block to find a parking spot, we would understand the current drive to charge people to park downtown. But that doesn’t sound like our city. Not usually.
Of course we have parking issues. People sometimes park where they shouldn’t. But that wouldn’t change if the city paid someone to come install meters to collect $1 an hour or so to park downtown. The city also would have to pay for monitoring downtown parking to look out for scofflaws and issue tickets that would have to be enforced — more resources.
We have to stop and ask, what is there to be gained by charging people to park downtown, and what might be lost?
The Columbus Parking Commission heard from some downtown business owners at a meeting last week who better put into words some of these things we’ve wondered about. In our view, the city would be wise to listen to these folks who truly have the most at stake — their livelihoods. Especially when, as The Republic’s Jana Wiersema reported, one of the businesspeople who spoke to the commission warned that charging for parking would “destroy the downtown.”
Jaime Mustaine, who owns the Tri-State Artisans shop on Washington Street, issued that warning and ridiculed one proposed rate structure that would charge $1 an hour for the first three hours, $5 per hour for the fourth and fifth hour, and $10 per hour for hours six through nine, enforced from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays. No one’s going to pay a $50-plus daylong parking tab in Columbus, Mustaine rightly observed.
Karen Cole, owner of Gramz Bakery across the way on Washington Street, said most of her customers are regulars. “Sometimes there is a parking constraint. But right now, in this business environment, my customers are telling me that they don’t have an issue finding parking on Washington to come to my store,” Cole told the commissioners.
Cole has a legitimate worry, based on what her customers tell her, that if they had to pay a buck just to stop and get a coffee or a pastry, they’d keep driving. “Fifty to 60% of our business is the people that, if they weren’t coming downtown to support downtown business such as mine, they would be in the Starbucks drive-thru, the McDonalds drive-thru, the Dunkin’ Donut drive-thru,” she said.
We hope the city is hearing this. Library director and commission member Jason Hatton said the commission had the same interest as businesspeople in bringing more visitors downtown. That may be. But we believe paid parking downtown may do more harm than good.
Our downtown is not jammed with traffic. Many people have invested and worked hard to make it a vibrant, unique, welcoming, occasionally bustling destination. We believe maintaining free parking downtown is the best thing our city can do to keep it that way.
