The Politics of Parking in a Small Town: The Circus Continues!

Back in February, I wrote an article about the stupidity of local city government and parking here in our little tourist town.

It is now five months later, and the stupidity continues, adding a whole new dimension to an already hotly debated issue!

In this case, however, city government is only partially to blame for the problem, in the sense of encouraging the current issues.

The situation that has "blown up" is that one of our few downtown shopping centers — as opposed to just regular street level shopping — recently changed hands.

The center had been in private ownership by the same local family since the 1950s, but evidently some combination of challenging economic times, and being made "an offer they couldn't refuse" they sold to a real estate holding company from Walnut Creek, CA.

Well, this out-of-town private equity firm decided that they needed to make some extra money by making the shopping center parking lot a "for pay" proposition as opposed to the free parking as it has been for as long as we can remember.

Effectively, instead of just being able to pull up and go into the Pharmacy to pick up your prescription and then perhaps head next door to the Mercantile to pick up a greeting card, and then go about your day come on now you have to install some parking app on your phone, enter a bunch of personal information after you enter the parking lot and then pay anywhere from $4.95 and up for the privilege of parking.

Needless to say, this is not sitting very well with local residents, but the net unfortunate outcome is — of course — that it is also hurting our local merchants who are seeing a sharp drop in business because people just don't want to mess with the parking situation.

This, in spite of the fact that you can go into the store and have 30 minutes of parking validated for free.

But that's not the real issue.

The real issue is that we live in a town with a very large retiree population, and the parking situation creates an unwlecome hassle factor: to get your free 30 minutes, you still have to pull up the app, enter your vehicle information when you pull in, then go into the store where you have business and use the app to scan the QR code on the sales counter in order to get your free parking.

In other words the shopping experience has gone from something you're not even thinking about, to being something that takes extra time. And, as I said, a good 30-40% of the shopping center users a retirement age folks that are not married to their phone the way people in their 20s and 30s might be, and quite a few are outright luddtes who don't even use cell phones for anything more than making basic phone calls.

So how's that working out for you?

Our local online bulletin board has been abuzz with rage-filled posts and comments from locals who have all of a sudden gotten $106.00 parking tickets courtesy of this company in Walnut Creek. Angry letters on legal letterhead have been flying, both to the prvate equity firm in Wlanut Creek, as well as to the State Attorney General's office, citing half a dozen statutes that are being violated.

The other way it's not really working out is the 3-4 times I have driven by there — one of which was on a Saturday which is a super busy day of the week — this parking lot that historically tends to be filled overflowing has had about 5-6 cars parked in it, instead of its capacity of about 120.

In a sense, it makes me want to say "well, power to you folks!" because they are voting with their dollars and saying well no, we're just not going to put up with that! You can put up your fancy parking system with your cameras to take pictures of people's license plates and likely not collect enough money to cover their cost because nobody's using it.

Of course there is an additional wrinkle here, in that the shopping center is right next to the ferry terminal where people arrive and drive off the ferry and so the parking may end up being occupied primarily by out-of-town day trippers instead... which isn't necessarily good for local business either.

You might think "well, why wouldn't it be good if the parking lot is filled without a town visitors?" The reason is that (A) people could park and be anywhere around town while blocking access for locals and (B) is that tourist season around here is essentially from late May through the end of September... and the rest of the time our businesses depend almost entirely on local customers. And if local people aren't showing up because they've finally decided to shop online instead of support local then everybody loses.

Frankly, I'm getting a little tired and frustrated of the sheer destructiveness these so-called "private equity firms" that seem to be taking over almost all aspects of life. Here we have an in-absentia landlord implementing a parking system that is potentially destroying business rather than doing anything useful. And this is all being done in order to collect a few more dollars from parking, so that "investors" can get the ROI they are demanding!

It has now been six years since we closed down the red dragonfly gallery and I have to admit as I have said before that I am pretty happy to no longer be part of the downtown business circle!

Thanks for visiting, and feel free to leave a comment — engagement is always welcome!

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