I am glad — relieved, even — that we no longer have a local business!
A large part of why I'm glad is that it means I no longer have to deal with the stupidity of local city government, and the effect their decisions would usually have on our business.
When we had the Red Dragonfly Gallery as a brick and mortar store, part of the eternal and unsolved problem with downtown — considering for a moment that this is a major tourist destination for nearby Seattle — related to parking.
To this day, there is very little parking in our town’s downtown area.
Some of the infinitely ”wise” (not!) decisions that have been made in the past five years include authorizing a permit to build a new hotel with 110 rooms — which is definitely a good thing because more visitor room capacity is needed — but allowing the project to go ahead with only twenty on site parking spaces!
The reasoning behind this disparity?
”Well, people can just park on the street!”
While we still had the gallery, the same city government engaged in a year long downtown beautification project which removed some 25 to 30 parking spaces as a result of widening the sidewalks on our main street. Whereas it looks pretty, parking is worse than ever.
For a while, talks were underway to allow the construction of two relatively low level parking garages on unused land a couple of streets off the shopping areas. The land owners were even agreeable to lease the land to the city at below market rates against getting a small percentage of the parking revenue. Adding those estimated 600 parking spaces would serve to significantly improve downtown congestion and largely eliminate the parking problem.
Endless discussion ensued, but the project quietly faded into the background like water sinking into desert sands.
Speculation is that the "right people" didn't stand to profit sufficiently from the project…
In the latest iteration of the parking circus, city government has decided that now is the time when all downtown area parking is going to become for-pay parking instead of where it was previously free parking, but with a two-hour time limit.
Maybe that will result in a limited amount of revenue being raised, but it certainly doesn't solve the actual parking problem, and the secondary effect — which apparently nobody wants to look at — is that those who are not willing to pay to park (particularly if they're spending the entire day in town and parking would be $20 to $25) is that ostensibly downtown parking will now increasingly spill over into the residential neighborhoods closest to downtown!
Our small town of some 10,000 has a pretty small geographical footprint, so the walk from the nearest neighborhoods to the city core is not long. However, I can't imagine the hassle of having out of town tourists parking on the street in front of your house and potentially blocking your driveway in your neighborhood.
As I said, I'm really glad we don't have a brick and mortar business anymore!
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All images are our own, unless otherwise attributed.
This is an AI-free post!