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Options being considered for parking in downtown Alpena

News Photo by Steve Schulwitz Alpena Downtown Development Parking Ambassador Savannah Peterson checks a car parked in a city-owned parking lot to see if it has parked there longer than regulations allow. The city and DDA are working on a plan to address parking issues downtown, which could lead to higher fines for repeat offenders, and possibly the use of parking meters down the road.

ALPENA — Paid parking in downtown Alpena has been a topic of debate for many years, but as more people visit the downtown, and traffic increases, some local officials think it could help solve parking issues, eventually.

The City of Alpena and the Alpena Downtown Development Authority are considering long-term options to address parking concerns downtown. Options on the table include state-of-the art parking meters, a parking structure, and stronger penalties and more enforcement.

Parking in downtown has been an issue for about 20 years, as business owners and customers clamor for more curbside parking in front of stores and restaurants, but a solution to the issue has yet to be found.

Now, the DDA and city are again trying to find ways to keep parking stalls open for customers, and have employees and business owners park in all-day parking lots that sit just outside the heart of downtown.

The idea of paid-parking has been met with resistance from some business owners and residents in the past. They claim it will hurt businesses and discourage people from coming downtown.

Anne Gentry, DDA executive director, said many other communities utilize paid parking and most people expect to use a meter when visiting those places. She said this past summer downtown was very busy and parking was in high demand.

Large projects, including the renovation of the State Theater, Royal Knight Theater, The Vaughn, and maybe a new hotel, could mean that parking remains an ongoing issue.

“We know someday we will need more parking downtown with the new developments that are coming and if we ever want a parking garage or increase capacity, we would have to have meters first for revenue to pay for it, or to shadow a developer they could make money on a parking structure,” Gentry said.

Gentry said parking meters of today are programmable and allow the owner to set parameters of their choosing, she said. If installed, the meters may only be operable during the day, and parking could be free again after 6 p.m. Gentry said during events, like parades, parking could be free too, but there are no parameters or fee schedule set at this time.

“They are much more sophisticated than they were the last time Alpena had them,” she said. “They have the capacity where we can totally customize them. We could program them so that the first hour is free and then they would have to pay after that. There are a lot of things we could do.”

Alpena City Manager Rachel Smolinski said some of the short-term answers could include increasing the amount of money people pay when they violate current parking policies. She said adjustments to the current parking schedule is also possible. She said the parking lots on the outskirts of downtown are a close walk to Second Avenue and are underutilized, so people can use them.

“It is the highly coveted on-street parking spaces closest to downtown shopping and restaurants that have become a point of contention over the past few years and recently. The DDA Parking Committee met this month to discuss a number of potential options that may provide a short-term solution including an escalating fine structure for repeat offenders, changes to the overnight parking policy, and increasing ticket fines; however, all of these potential solutions come with their own logistical issues to work through,” she said. “The DDA Parking Committee hopes to make a recommendation to the DDA board and then to council in the next month; however, we will need to continue to work toward a long-term solution as parking pressure increases in the downtown area.”

Currently the DDA has a parking ambassador who monitors parking downtown and issues citations to those who park in stalls longer than allowed. Gentry said there is a cost to add more help to monitor parking and issue more tickets.

There are nearly 2,000 parking stalls downtown, but few near popular stores and restaurants. In 2018, it was estimated a parking structure would cost in the neighborhood of $2 million and the proceeds from the parking meters would be used to help cover the payment for it. If a private company built a parking structure it would have paid parking in and around the structure, Gentry said.

“None of this is going to happen overnight, but we do need to have a long-term plan in place and that is what we are working on,” Gentry said.

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