I admit it. I was dead set against parking meters in Downtown Redding. This month marks the 3-year anniversary of the Redding Chamber of Commerce’s return to its roots in this part of the city.
Shortly after our move, I made the decision to park my car across the street at one of the few remaining metered parking spaces. A few hours later as I was getting into my car, I was greeted with a canary yellow parking ticket. “I thought they didn’t enforce parking meters” was my first thought. Reluctantly, I went to City Hall and paid the $24.00 (or so) fine. At that time Downtown Redding was still in a hopeful mindset that redevelopment opportunities would come someday.
And have they ever!
My 7-year-old daughter said to me on the way to school one morning, “We live in construction city, daddy!”. That is music to my ears. She recognized the commercial and residential projects proliferating across Redding. However, with rapid change comes challenge, both expected and unexpected. One such expected challenge is the supply and demand for parking in Downtown Redding. We the Chamber in partnership with many others decided to ask businesses what they think about paid parking at this time. You may be surprised to know that most of them were hoping enforcement of parking meter violations would take place as soon as possible. This would create the turnover in the few precious parking spots within close proximity to their storefronts. The City of Redding has responded and is now more actively enforcing parking violations in 2-hour parking zones and metered parking. The point to remember is that this enforcement is about retail not revenue. This is not a moneymaker for the city. It is a way to “curb” those working in an office all day from occupying a prime spot in front of a restaurant or shop. Anticipated revenue may not even cover the cost of enforcement.
There has been more foot-traffic and scooter-traffic and bicycle-traffic in the neighborhood over the past week since the southern portion of the parking garage has been closed. There are benefits and costs to the reality of distributed parking. Our goal is to help businesses adversely affected by the construction to survive until the parking supply increases again with the new multi-level parking garage and additional inventory creating strategies are implemented. The best thing you can do is patronize businesses close to the construction zones.
For an update on Downtown Redding redevelopment, parking, and the new DASH shuttles, please CLICK HERE.
