Our business borders Rio Grande Avenue (also known as “the alley” next to the railroad tracks). The availability of metered parking on Rio Grande is important to the economic viability of our gallery and many other businesses. Metered parking is as important to us as it is to Main Avenue.
Rio Grande spaces provide needed long-term parking and locals know they can usually find a place to park there, even during busy summer months. Why not create employee parking spaces west of Rio Grande and see if they fill up? Most of those spaces are usually empty.
In addition, how about business owners becoming more engaged in solving the problem of their employees parking in the central business district and plugging meters? As members of the business community, we should all take responsibility for creating a parking plan for our employees. It is not burdensome for a business to buy Transit Center parking permits for employees and have the employees pay that back using a weekly or biweekly payroll deduction. Many businesses do that.
I appreciate the city’s efforts to create parking for customers and employees, but I do not see how taking parking spaces from one group of businesses in order to alleviate parking problems for other businesses is a good, or fair, idea.
Antonia Clark
Durango
