Creative Village on-street parking soon to be meterless but will still cost
As more and more vehicles begin pouring into Creative Village later this month when the joint downtown UCF/Valencia campus opens, those looking for parking may not find drawn spots but instead strips of onstreet zones.
But just because there’s no meter doesn’t you don’t have to pay.
Orlando is launching a test of meterless parking in Creative Village. If successful, the oneyear pilot could later expand to the rest of downtown.
As part of the test, about 200 on-street spaces will be made available, with motorists able to pay on the ParkMobile application or website. On the app, the zone will be available as opposed to a designated parking space. Already, ParkMobile can be used in place of putting change in downtown meters.
Prices will remain the same as other metered spots downtown — $1 per hour — but will be metered for a few hours longer in Creative Village. Spaces will be metered from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. to help accommodate nighttime classes, parking division manager Scott Zollars said. Elsewhere in downtown, spaces are metered from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
After 9 p.m., the spaces will be free.
“We think it will help reduce congestion because we won’t have people hunting for free parking in that area,” Zollars said.
For the first 30 days, users can get their first parking stop free through the app, using the promotional code orlandocv.
While some residents already live in Creative Village at the opened Amelia Court apartments, there will soon be a significant uptick in traffic. The 68-acre village’s anchor, a joint UCF and Valencia campus, is set to open Aug. 26, bringing 7,600 students plus hundreds more faculty and staff to the neighborhood west of Interstate 4. Once the campus opens, about 600 students will move in.
This is an early stage of a longterm buildout of the village, which city leaders have pitched as having the potential for attracting high-wage, digital media jobs to join the college campus.