This week, the San Luis Obispo City Council will consider whether to further study parking rates in the downtown area for both the parking structures and on-street parking.
The meeting will be held Tuesday, Nov. 7 at 5:30 p.m. in the City Council Chambers.
A recent increase in downtown parking rates went into effect on July 1 of this year.
These increases were to help with many costs including debt costs related to the newly awarded contract for the construction of the Cultural Arts District parking structure.
Some business owners say this parking rate increase has impacted the foot traffic to their stores.
“We again need people to come in and shop," said Steven Wick, owner of Euphoria, a clothing, jewelry and body-care store in downtown. "Ever since they implemented this, our sales have dropped. If you look at the graph, each month it's less and once you’re hearing it, it kind of solidifies that effect it's having. We’re doing our best and it's creating stress for us because we have bills to pay. We’re actually bringing people down to shop. If all of us are gone, what are they coming down here for."
The current rate for on-street parking in the main part of downtown is $3 per hour.
“There’s almost no parking already to begin with but charging $4 for an hour is just insane," said Ben Laughlin, a student at Cal Poly. "I think it's going to drive businesses out and people out of downtown SLO. There’s just no reason why parking should be that expensive."
City leaders announced that they recently secured better-than-anticipated financing for the Cultural Arts District parking structure and hope that this study can help them identify areas where they can hopefully provide parking cost relief to visitors and the community.
City staff released several parking options that the council could consider including reinstating one-hour-free parking, free parking on Sunday, and a reduction in hourly cost. Along with that, they estimated how much revenue the city could potentially lose with each scenario.
“It’s a lot to ask of people to come down and spend time down here when it's going to cost them more for them to park than it's going to cost for their coffee that they're coming to get," said Sara Vaskov, owner of Hands Gallery, a boutique art gallery in the area.
"The City of San Luis Obispo has raised the parking fees so much recently that I am now seeking parking many blocks away from where my notary services are needed," said Cara Leandro, Notary Public business owner. "Parking in those residential areas is now scarce also because a lot of the employees of the restaurants, shops, bars, and other businesses are doing the same thing because it's not affordable to park downtown any longer. I have recently had to raise my prices due to the high cost of gasoline and I do not want to raise my prices further due to the high cost of parking in the city of San Luis Obispo."
The City of San Luis Obispo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
