Somerset Coun. Diane Holmes is pushing to extend free Saturday on-street parking to January 2012 in Chinatown.
A push by Somerset Coun. Diane Holmes to extend Chinatown’s free street parking on Saturdays to January 2012 has resulted in a re-evaluation of the parking regulations in other downtown districts.
A temporary exemption to allow for free Saturday parking on Somerset Street from Bronson Avenue to Preston Street during the construction of the Chinatown Gateway had encouraged the Somerset Street Chinatown BIA to press for an extension.
According to the report for the city’s transportation committee, other downtown retail districts such as Somerset Village, the Bank Street Promenade and Preston Street all have free weekend parking on both Saturdays and Sundays.
Lori Mellor, executive director of the Preston Street BIA, says offering free weekend parking is “really an important tool for (business owners) to attract people to their retail stores,” especially when “everybody is competing with the malls . . . where there is acres of free parking.”
Officials with the Chinatown BIA were unavailable for comment, but the report to the city indicates that the free parking has resulted in “increased commercial activity” and that the BIA “attributes the increase in business to the free Saturday parking.”
For Val Thompson-Davis, a Quebec resident, the “Saturday free parking makes a big difference” because it allows her to “do activities in town where there is free parking and (she) won’t do activities in town or shop where there is no free parking.”
Holmes says the Chinatown BIA has been trying to establish free Saturday parking for the past five years but was rejected several times because it “was a loss of revenue for the city.”
In the past, all parking revenue went into the bottom line of the city’s budget, for things like snow removal.
Holmes says the city’s parking reserve fund gives the city an opportunity to consider different options, so city staff “don’t feel so tightly bound to try and make every cent out of parking.”
“Now we will have money to build new parking structures or put in more meters in other parts of the city,” says Holmes.
According to the report, the total loss of revenue for the city to maintain the temporary measure until 2012 is $49,000.
Holmes says city staff will review parking needs in the Chinatown area and will respond to the findings.
The future of parking rates will reamain undecided until the study is completed.
The request to extend the free parking on Somerset Street will be proposed to city council on Feb. 22.