By Zenab Bagha
It has taken Preston Street merchants nearly three years to get the extra parking spaces.
But now that they have 300 shiny new parking meters on their street, not everyone is pleased.
“Business has gone down,” says Angela Dicola, owner of the Cosenza Billiard Hall. “If people want a coffee they have to put $1.25 in the meter, so they don’t stop for the coffee,” she adds.
Her sentiments are echoed in a little cake shop down the street.
“I’ve heard customers complain about what an inconvenience these new meters are,” says Giovanna Carrozza, who has worked at the Reggina Pasticceria Gelateria for the last six years.
The new meters were installed this September along Preston Street and onto adjoining streets. Like almost all Ottawa parking meters, the new meters are modified to accept smart cards. That means that early next year when the cards go on sale, drivers won’t have to carry coins in their pockets to feed the meters. Business people could also claim parking expenses by showing receipts for the smart cards, which will sell for $25 to $55.
The smart cards are part of a pilot-project still being tested on a select group of businesses. The city hasn’t decided yet on when and where they’ll sell the cards.
Ottawa parking chief, Larry Neilsen, says a smart-card “works much like a Bell debit phone card…you insert it in a slot on the meter and the display tells you how much time and money you have left.”
He says the modified meters were intended “not necessarily to generate money, but as a convenience.”
But the meters on Preston Street have meant that some store owners can’t park their cars on the street anymore.
Mario Giannetti, president of the Preston Street Business Improvement Area and owner of Preston Hardware, says that’s one of the reasons the parking meters were installed.
“In the past, government workers and store owners used to leave their cars here from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Now there’s more space for customers,” he says.
Giannetti hopes the increased parking space will boost the flow of customers to the area.
“Within the past 10 years more businesses came up and there wasn’t enough parking space. Now with the meters, there is greater turnover. Customers come and go,” he says.
Carrozza says not everyone benefits from the increased turnover rate. “It’s different for restaurants whose clients sit there for one or two hours…Our customers don’t want to put a quarter in the meter when it will only take them only two seconds to pick up their cake order, ” she says.
Giannetti says he hasn’t heard any complaints from customers since the meters were installed. He says the majority of Preston businesses voted for the meters at the association’s last annual general meeting in the spring.
But not all the businesses are complaining.
“People have to get used to them (the meters,)” says Dominic Carrozza, who owns Trattoria Italia Dining Lounge and Café.
Neilsen says installing the meters was the easiest way to increase parking space on Preston. A bylaw prevents the city from expanding or creating new parking lots if it hasn’t installed parking meters in the area.
“The businesses asked for the parking space as an association. Within its ranks we know that some people are not happy with the meters, but we presume they have come to terms with the majority vote,” says Neilsen.