The city will launch a downtown valet parking pilot program this weekend that will run for two months.
The program will begin Friday, with $5 valet service from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. and continue each Friday and Saturday through Feb. 1. The fee can be paid via cash or credit. Drop-off and pick-up will be in the loading zone at the intersection of Main and East Cherry streets, with cars valeted at the parking deck a block away at Lewis and Main streets.
The program is meant to encourage use of the parking garage and attract people downtown, acting City Administrator and Redevelopment Director Robert Landolfi said in an interview after tonight’s Redevelopment Agency meeting. The six-story, 524-space parking deck on Lewis Street opened 15 years ago at a cost of $11 million.
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city’s biggest parking asset is the parking deck, which is underused in the evening, Landolfi said. Some people are not used to using the parking deck and others might not like to walk, he said, while others might have an unsafe perception of parking garages.
The idea for valet service came out of discussions Mayor Raymond Giacobbe, Jr. had with business owners about how to encourage use of the parking deck and bring people downtown, according to Landolfi.
The valet service will be contracted through the city’s Parking Utility. Landolfi estimated the cost would be about $8,000 a month. He doesn’t expect the program to break even but if it costs a little to bring patrons downtown, it’s worth experimenting.
To evaluate the program, city officials will consider how much use the 18-night pilot gets and talk to business owners. “If people use it, and it brings people downtown, I think it has merit and we’ll take a real look at continuing it,” Landolfi said.
This past fall, the city unveiled a comprehensive parking plan, which came out of a parking study authorized by the former Parking Authority, The study was one of the final acts by the autonomous Parking Authority before it was dissolved, with regulation shifted to a Parking Utility within City Hall.
