East Grand Rapids Parking Changes

[DwntwnGeo]

A few quotes from an article in Mlive today:

[beergeek]

the shuttered Kabookie's restaurant, which soon will reopen as a Scandinavian eatery

[Mark Miller]

If you really want to be a city, then this is what you should do.

This would be very progressive, kudos to EGR for at least discussing this issue.

[Rizzo]

Wouldn't the dropping of any minimum parking requirements create a business friendly climate in the city? Wouldn't that alleviate the strain on startup-build costs and allowing the business owner to build what he or she thinks they may need to stay competitive?

[Explorer55]

This is exactly the type of parking/economic development issues Donald Shoup writes about in his book "The High Cost of Free Parking". He strongly advocates the fresh look and approach EGR seems to be taking here. However, to help alleviate parking demand, or better manage it, and to bring money into the neigborhood for infrastructure maintenance and improvements, he also advocates paid on-street parking. Now is EGR ready for that????

[tamias6]

Paid Parking seems to be a double edged sword. On one hand it will get parking spaces to circulate faster and allow each parking space to serve more people in a given period of time since people would have to feed the meter. But on the other hand shops and retailers want people to slow down, take their sweet time, and stroll, something that the worry of feeding the meter would prevent.

[Allison Slater]

And then you get those who look for free parking, and complain that there isn't enough of it (because they don't want to pay.)

[GRDadof3]

What they could do is set up the meters so you just pay a flat fee, and not hourly. That way it might be a disincentive to drive, yet people won't feel rushed to get back to the car. It sounds like their main concern is people who work in Gaslight Village using the parking 8 hours of the day, which could be used for shoppers and visitors. Hmmm, where have we heard that before?

[twoshort]

What they could do is set up the meters so you just pay a flat fee, and not hourly. That way it might be a disincentive to drive, yet people won't feel rushed to get back to the car. It sounds like their main concern is people who work in Gaslight Village using the parking 8 hours of the day, which could be used for shoppers and visitors. Hmmm, where have we heard that before?

[Raildudes dad]

Make it two hour parking. Or ask the person parking there for eight hours not to do that any more (shouldn't be THAT hard to find them, it's not that big of a place).

[bigbobspizza]

The on street parking is limited to 2 hours from 6am-6pm. There is only 1 city parking lot in Gaslight Village, in front of our business. This is not restricted by time and used heavily during the daytime hours by employess of other businesses in Gaslight. The parking ramp at Jade Pigs development is offered for use to employess of the businesses right now, but I would assume that may end when the residential and retail spaces are completely filled up.