Parking after 5 pm no problem

<< Back to archives | Monday, August 27, 2007

First - please note the parking map below today’s post.

An informal survey shows there are empty parking slots on even the core blocks of Fairhaven after 5 pm on weekdays.  Harris between 10th & 11th and even 11th and 12th.  11th between Harris and Mill.  My my.  How can that be?  Employees of shops and restaurants are still working.  Most shops do not close till 6 pm and restaurants stay open later.  Answer below

There are four groups of people who clog up our prime parking spaces during the day - robbing our merchants and restaurants of customers.  One group is the business owners who have offices on the second and third floors of the mixed use buildings.  Many of us have talked to them over the past few months - and the ones who park in the core do not care that they are taking hundreds of dollars away from shops and restaurants each day with each occupied space.  A second group is the employees and also a few of the owners of shops and restaurants.  ( I was having lunch at one restaurant recently and watched the owner of another restaurant located a block away park right next to my window.) The third group is the construction folks.  The general contractors do their best to have their people park out of the core but their sub contractors - many of whom are only working for a couple weeks on a building - tend to park anywhere that is convenient.  And the last group is about 25 to 30 tenants of Chuckanut Square - the Bellingham Housing Authority building at McKenzie and 12th. 

Now - the construction will be ending within a month on the two new buildings on 11th.  And not only will the workers be gone but about 30 renovated parking spaces will reopen on McKenzie between 11th and 12th.  Unfortunately, the Chuckanut Square folks love that street for 24 hour parking.  The Housing Authority provides only 21 spaces for its 101 residential units.  They have shown a strong resistance to being responsible for their own impacts on our commercial district.

The business owners - owners, not employees - who have offices on upper floors are the ones who should have the brains and decency to park just less than two blocks away and free up core parking spaces.  We ask them to please reconsider and become good neighbors. 

I will have more on parking soon.  Next - how the underground parking at the new buildings is not working at all and why.  And why we do not need nor want parking meters. 

Answer to empty after 5 pm parking spaces?  Business owners in 2nd floor offices have gone home.