Parking kiosks collect complaints
Cherry Creek North merchants say they drive out customers
By Janet Forgrieve, Rocky Mountain News
May 27, 2005
Many Cherry Creek North merchants seem resigned to the fact that parking kiosks are there to stay.
Still, the system confounds too many customers and needs a fix, they argued at a meeting early Thursday.
“We’ve lost the leisurely synergy,” said Tam O’Neill, who owns Cherry Creek Custom Framing at 311 Detroit St. “If your business depends on lots of people coming through in a leisurely way, your business is probably down.”
Before the kiosks, she said, customers spent time. Now, many will call from their cell phones to ask her to bring framed pictures out to their cars, she said.
O’Neill joined about 85 merchants gathered to air grievances and, in a few cases, praise the paid parking system instituted last August.
Suggestions ranged from cutting the hours that paid parking is enforced to fixing signs to make the rules clearer to offering parkers a “grace period” before issuing tickets.
The group agreed to form a task force to discuss and propose changes and to ask the city of Denver to change the hours that payment is required.
“I think everyone’s very committed to seeing this through,” said Matt McClung, manager of Mel’s Bar & Grill.
Mel’s regulars have been angered by the inconvenience of the kiosks, he said.
“I think it’s important in the conversation today that everyone talked about ‘our customers.’ Cherry Creek has developed a core customer base, and the parking situation has deeply affected that group.”
Currently, parkers must pay between the hours of 8 a.m. and 7 p.m.
Several restaurateurs want the time cut back to 5 p.m., saying the later time has been discouraging happy hour customers and early diners.
Paid parking came about through an intergovernmental agreement with the city.
Denver put in the 71 kiosks using an $8 million bond issue to be paid off through collections over 20 years.
“The kiosks are linked to revenue bonds and are not going anywhere for 19 years - by law,” said Marc Schtul, chief executive officer of the Cherry Creek North Business Improvement District.
Lin Carson of Cosmopolitan Cafe at East Third Avenue and Clayton Street has gathered about 60 signatures on a petition asking the city to take the kiosks out, she said.
“I have been positive from the start and I gave it a chance, but I’ve become convinced it’s not the right thing for my customers,” Carson said at Thursday’s meeting.
Carson argued that the district and merchants could devise some way to replace the $80,000 to $90,000 in monthly parking revenue to pay back the bonds to the city.
Some others had a different outlook.
Shortly before the kiosks were installed, Emin Fatosh was debating whether to move his salon from the East Second Avenue location it has inhabited since 1984.
“(The kiosks) saved my business and improved my clientele,” he said. “Before the kiosks, Second Avenue was completely full; there was not a single place to park.”
Schtul told the group that the kiosks were instituted to prevent employees from taking up spaces that customers could be using.
The city now provides about 200 spaces in the Clayton Lane parking garage at $40 and $50 a month for workers in the district and has freed some street parking in the residential areas as well, Schtul said.
One retailer argued that parking wasn’t the main reason many were experiencing a downturn in business.
“It’s very easy to blame the parking,” said jewelry store owner Raz Gnat. “But Colorado’s economy has been hurting. We need to find a way to bring people back.”
Scores of new retail projects in the metro area are competing for shoppers like never before, Gnat said.
Gnat and others said merchants and the district need to work together on a cohesive marketing effort aimed at attracting shoppers to the district.
That’s something the new task force will likely address, said the district’s marketing director, Christina Brickley.