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Business & Tech

Two-Hour Parking Likely for Downtown Before Summer's End

An ordinance paving the way for the imposition of time limits on public street parking is headed for the Gig Harbor City Council in June.

Gig Harbor will likely see two-hour parking limits in the downtown waterfront and Finholm districts before the summer is out.

An ordinance paving the way for time limits is due to go on the city council agenda at its next meeting on June 13. It comes at the recommendation of the Gig Harbor Historic Waterfront Association, which has been working with the city and merchants to find solutions to what has long been a testy issue — the perceived shortage of parking.

The ordinance would grant the city engineer the authority to establish limited-time street parking on Harborview Drive, North Harborview Drive and Pioneer Way, said city administrator Rob Karlinsey. Once passed, the engineering department would decide on the particulars of rolling it out.

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In its recommendation to city officials, the GHHWA suggested that two-hour time limits be placed on 70 public parking spots, Monday through Saturday during the day up until 7 p.m., said GHHWA President Gary Glein. While the city is largely in agreement, Karlinsey said, “We want to take a more incremental approach.”

That means there will probably be fewer limited-time parking spots to start. They may also be spaced more intermittently than what the GHHWA has proposed.

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Curb paint will designate timed spots. “We want to avoid sign clutter,” Karlinsey said.

Roughly, the areas targeted for time limits extend from the on Harborview Drive to the , from around the corner to Tarabochia Street and along the business stretch of the Finholm district. Enforcement would largely be voluntary.

Those are the zones identified as “higher impact areas”  in a GHHWA study of usage in March 2010, said Glein.

The association spent nine days counting how many public on-street slots were being used throughout the day. Overall, the average was 34 percent, but the percentage varied widely depending on location and time of day. For example, occupied spots on Harborview between Pioneer Way and Rosedale Street NW ranged anywhere from 11 percent in the early morning to 100 percent during peak mid-day hours.

The usage survey followed up a 2008 GHHWA effort to count all spaces throughout downtown, including on-street public spaces and privately owned off-street lots. The number was just more than 2,500, dispelling the notion that there was too little parking. According to Glein, the problem it turns out is where those parking spots are, when they are available and who has access to them.

Access is an especially sore point among business owners, with a dividing line being between those who have no private off-street parking and those that do.

The gripe among the former is that other owners and employees take up parking spaces in front of their stores, leaving no place nearby for customers to park.

“I’m tired of watching someone park in front of my store and then go into their business,” said jeweler , at a recent GHHWA meeting about parking. “I’ll go and say, ‘I’m not parking in front of your store, can you not park in front of mine.’ It shouldn’t be my job to go to them.”

Businesses with lot parking are territorial about it; most use “customers only” signage to dissuade others from taking up spaces because they pay rent or taxes for the privilege of having it.

“If I don’t sign it, I am just bearing the burden of that expense to provide customer parking [for others],” said owner Randy Blue.

Glein said the limited-time parking would help ease the situation by creating greater parking turnover, potentially resulting in increased merchant sales. It should also deter members of the downtown working community from using the public spaces for daylong parking.

It’s only the first step toward improving parking. A public lot creating 30-35 spaces next to the Tides is still scheduled for construction in the fall. The GHHWA has also urged the city to pursue a leasing arrangement for the vacant land behind , which could add another 30 or so public spaces.

Karlinsey said that site would be “a neat one” for public parking because you could potentially access it from Harborview next to Mostly Books. But that lot will have to wait. “We’re so broke these days. There’s not any money for it in the city budget.”

The association also is continuing to pursue downtown marinas and churches on the prospect of creating some employee parking on their lots, which are mostly vacant on weekdays, said Glein. Plus, it continues to nudge merchants to motivate employees to park their cars out of the way of other businesses.

The hope is to get the limited-time parking in place by early July, although that timing may be tight. The ordinance requires a second reading before the council can vote, so the earliest it could be approved is June 27.

“It’s something the merchants feel is important to get done for the summer season,” said Glein. “I understand why. They’re struggling through a recession.”

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