Photo provided An artist’s rendition of the 25th Street entrance to NexusPark.
Businesses near Columbus’ Circle K Fieldhouse are growing frustrated as fieldhouse visitors encroach on privately-owned nearby parking lots during big events, and also receiving a memo from the city saying, it’s a “you” problem, not an “us” problem.
But really, everyone knows it’s a city problem because frankly, there isn’t enough parking at NexusPark or the fieldhouse for big events.
Someone underestimated the parking needs by a large margin and that mistake continues to multiply with every large event at the facility.
In a memo hand-delivered to NexusPark neighbors earlier this spring, NexusPark officials have some suggestions for the private parking lot owners to deal with the problem.
These solutions include businesses being advised to buy signage warning the lots are private and their cars will be towed, (that way the city isn’t the “bad guy,”) or, paying for their own workers to stand at parking lot entrances to charge for parking in the private lots (no word on where employees or customers are supposed to park while we’re selling our spaces), or well, just dealing with the chaos.
On Friday, city officials said they would be willing to provide the no parking signs at no cost to the neighboring businesses, which is a sign of progress. But there’s still no agreement on why businesses should have to pay employees overtime to sit outside private parking lots and “charge” people to park.
The city says it “will begin” offering shuttle services for large events — no word on whether or when that will happen, and city officials are “continuing to communicate with event organizers about additional parking availability at Lincoln Park.” But if that is happening, why are people still parking in private lots?
We can tell you why. Both these options involve people walking a longer distance to the fieldhouse, and leaving their vehicle far away from the fieldhouse entrance, and there are a lot of entitled people who believe that if a private parking lot nearby has a space, they should be able to park there. (Try that in Indy sometime and see how that works out.)
Once the remaining lot construction at NexusPark is completed, the city claims it will have 96 more parking spaces. But that’s not enough. Far more than 96 additional cars are descending on businesses around the fieldhouse during big events and signs won’t deter them.
We have another suggestion.
The city should be deploying its reserve police officers to block off the private parking lots as people arrive for big events, and direct them to where they should park. They could also direct traffic after the event to prevent individuals from speeding across private lots to get faster exits.
The city can pay for this staffing. The city created this problem and the city should be fixing it.
Or, if that’s not workable, any event that results in a private business having unauthorized users in its parking lot should be able to charge the city for blocking lack of access to its own private property. The invoices could be sent monthly.
It’s time to make this the city’s problem, not the private business owners, who have done nothing but try to be good neighbors and been brushed aside and told to come up with their own solutions to a problem they did not create.
