A closer look at plans for parking
Pros and cons raised about the initiative to open up spaces downtown.
A parking management plan for Rome’s downtown district that includes paying to use on-street spaces remains controversial, but the opposing sides share a common goal.
“We are 90 percent behind the city’s plan,” said businessman Ira Levy, who led a contingent of mer- chants and property owners who spoke against adopting the proposal.
Aimed at making the shops and restaurants more accessible to customers, the plan’s major thrust calls for charging a fee to use the 412 currently free on-street spaces and converting about 1,400 spaces in decks to free parking.
The Rome City Commission voted 5 to 4 last week to move forward, but those in the majority echoed the minority’s calls to go slow.
“My motion is to implement the total plan incrementally, but we have to have the plan in place,” Commissioner Evie McNiece said. “We’ve never had a plan.”
Both sides see the full spaces in front of Broad Street buildings as a deterrent to future growth.
The district is becoming a hub for retail, restaurants, offices, residents and visitors, but only about half the buildings are in use at this point.
Present and future
Wayne Robinson and Mark Cochran have already redeveloped several of the historic buildings, and both said their plans to continue would be hampered by a lack of parking space.
“What this debate is really about is the future, when we fill all the buildings,” Cochran said. “Do we face it now, or do we face it later?”
If the answer is “later,” he added, it’s likely that he and Robinson would look for other areas to invest.
However, a number of merchants said they’re afraid they’ll lose business because their customers have said they won’t pay to park and shop. That would also have an effect on downtown growth, they warned.
“The moment I see that my business is going to decline, I’ll be looking off Broad for the first place I can find with free parking,” said Lisa Landry, owner of Living & Giving Lifestyle.
Kayla Waters added another angle, as a customer whose daughter takes classes at Dance Works several times a week.
She said crossing Second Avenue from a free parking deck with kids and gear in tow is too dangerous and she would pay to park on Broad. But her habit of shopping or getting a snack during class-time would likely come to an end.
“If I’m using $10 a week to park, that’s money that’s not going to those businesses,” she said.
Ryan Earnest, president and CEO of Heritage First Bank, also weighed in. He said if merchants are concerned they’ll lose money, the bank — which has loaned over $15 million to Broad Street businesses in the past seven years — would have to “sit up and take notice.”
But Bob Blumberg argued that the current parking squeeze is untenable. Blumberg owns two businesses on Broad, lives there, and chairs the Downtown Development Authority.
“We’ve spent five years doing studies,” he said. “The downtown parking problem is a good problem to have, but it must be addressed now to support our continued success and future growth.”
Commission split
Commissioner Bill Collins said the board’s recent fact-finding trip to Chattanooga opened his eyes to ways of revitalizing the heart of the city.
“It showed me that the whole deal with downtown going forward has everything to do with parking,” Collins said. “We love the city of Rome and we want to make absolutely certain it’s not just here for (our generation).”
But Commissioner Wendy Davis, who voted against the plan, said it doesn’t go far enough.
It’s an overly aggressive response to a short-term problem, she said, and doesn’t provide a long-term solution.
“We need to think 50 years down the road … (but) our biggest problem now is employees parking in the spots we want customers in,” she said.
Free parking in the deck is expected to draw in employees, who must pay to park in there now. And merchants are in favor of making the decks more inviting to their customers.
There’s a new push to add more lighting inside the structures, clean them up and increase police patrols to discourage illegal activity.
A detailed signage plan also is underway, to make it easier for motorists to find the spots.
But that’s precisely why Commissioner Craig McDaniel said he rejected the overall management plan that includes the parking fees and fines without seeing how the deck initiative will affect the situation.
“I was for meters and now I’m not. Not until we do our job,” McDaniel said after listening to the public comments. “This plan doesn’t give us one additional parking space. It gives us money, but we had money before and didn’t do what we should have with it.”