Elon News Network spoke with Jill Weston, Elon’s downtown development director, on the town’s future plans for parking. Weston spoke about adding additional spaces and what the current issues with downtown parking are.
Are there any plans in place to add more parking currently?
There are and just let me say that every downtown has a concern about parking and the reality is, most downtowns including ours do. We do have parking, it may not be right in front of the restaurant you want to eat. Actually the parking on West Lebanon, eventually that parking is going to go all the way down to church street. But eventually, we'll be putting it all the way down. And we've actually been surveying the parking at prime times to see if there's spots available even look what we have now.
And so far, we have not found the time that there was actually not a spot available, there has always been somewhere to park. It's just a matter of, you might have to walk a little bit, but in any big city, there's parking structure, you walk two or three blocks, and that's just part of downtown in general. We're really lucky to have the Elon Community Church parking lot that in the evening is not designated university which it is during the week, but people can park in that lot and eat at the restaurants most of the time too, they allow that. So I think it's more of a perception than a reality to be honest.
Would you say parking is not a top concern for downtown?
It is. What it is, I mean, it's something because people perceive that we don't have parking. So I think there are several lots that are private, lots. So of course, as a town, we want to provide as much public parking as possible, which is why we want to extend that parking on Lebanon. We don't have any plans to do any big lots or parking structures, things of that sort. But we do want to extend that all the way down and that will create quite a few more spaces.
Do you know when that will happen?
The next phase we're looking at doing we actually are trying to determine because we have funds available for sidewalk and or more parking spaces so we're trying to determine the priority and it's tough because we want sidewalks too and we just added on the one that goes all the way down Lebanon now that is completed and so we're going to do one on Trollinger and unfortunately, the project was a little more than we expected. We thought we were going to be able to do both of those at the same time, which is why we're doing a headcount of parking spaces at different times to determine which is the priority. It is in the plan in the next couple of years to complete it all the way down, so that'll add probably 30 spots by the time we’re done.
Does the town have any ideas on how the issue of the perception of parking would be fixed?
Because the spots that are on Williamson in front of the businesses are kind of always taken, we do need to address it. We haven't determined if that is metered parking, limited time. But there are students that end up parking in prime locations and they park there all day long. So that definitely is an issue when there are lots on campus for students to park so I think the rotation of cars if we knew they were moving every couple of hours out of those spots, and then they're more available for people that are popping in to have lunch or want to go shop at one of the stores or something. So we know we need to take a look at some options on how to handle people that are parking in the prime spots all day long. That's probably the biggest issue we have right now.
Is metered parking something the town would possibly do?
There's talks about what if, I think the public is maybe not so excited about that idea. We really haven't decided we're really looking for a recommendation from our firm that's doing our master plan and what they recommend. Do they recommend timed parking or you have a two-hour maximum or metered parking or what their experience works on a town our size and our unique situation with a university literally across the street. We're definitely not sold on any one thing but a meter is something we would consider.
Do you have any other ideas to try and combat students parking in spots like all the different parking?
We have to label more of the spots that they have because some of them just don't say they're not limited. So nobody's broken any laws there. We definitely, in my opinion, need all of our what I consider prime locations, limited time. Two hours, three hours or whatever it is, and then also making sure that our business owners and their employees have a place to park.