News

By Margie Plunkett

    To meter or not to meter, that was the question at two Delray Beach meetings last month intended to generate ideas that will get the city closer to resolving its longtime parking issues.
    More than 50 merchants, restaurateurs and residents turned out for meetings at the community center to share ideas on a year-old parking study and how to manage the busy city’s downtown traffic.
    The parking situation “has been going on for 20 years,” said Mayor Woodie McDuffie. “We need an implementation road map.”
    “This is the second time around for us,” said Fran Marincola, retired owner of the Caffe Luna Rosa restaurant on the ocean. “We had the same thing come up when we put meters on the East. Everyone we asked said, ‘No, I don’t want meters.’ I was against it. We thought it would be the end of the world — but it’s fine.”
    Some insisted that metered parking would kill retail business and wanted free parking at least during the day.
There seemed to be a sense among many that what works for the restaurants and nightlife isn’t necessarily good for the retailers by day.
    Others wanted a system to push the overflow of traffic into underutilized parking garages and many backed the concept of moving employee parking out of prime spots for shoppers and possibly into the garages.
    The garages spurred a discussion on safety and security: Women, particularly, don’t like to walk the garages at night, with some merchants noting that they provide rides to the garage for female employees.
    Marincola wanted to see free parking along Atlantic for an hour, which he contended would double turnover. He also wanted to eliminate employee parking.
    Carole Lynn, owner of Forms Art Gallery, said, however, “You make it impossible to shop more than one hour.”
    Shoppers at Lynn’s store often take more than that time to decide on purchases that can run $4,000 or $5,000. “They don’t want to say, ‘I’ve got to go’ to catch their parking meter before it expires.’
    “We’re a very successful town,” Lynn said. “I don’t want to lose that.”
    Nancy Lierle of Delray News & Tobacco Center said, “Most of my customers are against meters. A lot come to Delray Beach as a destination. Maybe two hours isn’t enough to stroll the blocks and go to all the great shops we have.”
    Marincola’s response: “If a person needs more than an hour, they need to park somewhere else and pay for it.”
    If meters were installed, many indicated they’d rather see “smart” meters, where one can serve 15 parking spaces.
    That would prevent added clutter on already crowded Atlantic Avenue sidewalks as well as add flexibility in how the city would be metered, according to Don Upton, president of Fairfield Index Inc., who was hired by the city to facilitate the
sessions.