If Ottawa City Hall’s downtown parking plan takes effect, business employees will be asked to get parking tags for reserved spots in city-owned lots by this summer. Police Chief Brent Roalson says each business would get one or two. The idea is to keep street parking open for customers. He told an audience at City Hall last night, 40 of the 80 spots in the Hassel Memorial Lot would be reserved.
For now, the city’s working on parking for the area zoned commercial. It’ll deal with residential parking later. A downtown building owner wants residential parking in the plan now. After all, renting out apartments is her business.
There are still some details to work out and the City Council still has to pass ordinances spelling out the rules. With the new arrangements, the city also aims to breathe life into the mostly unknown parking validation program. It forgives overtime parking tickets when someone can prove having been shopping. Many of the downtown business owners at last night’s meeting said they either didn’t know about or understand the program. On the rare occasion when a customer asks for validation, the business owners and staff don’t know what to do.
Ottawa Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Jeff Hettrick and Police Chief Brent Roalson look over aerial pictures of the city’s downtown parking lots and the parking tags the city would issue.