Pay to Park?

Dawn Oesch, president of the Downtown Business Association, said this is the worst possible time for instituting such a system due to the tough economic times currently facing small businesses that occupy downtown storefronts.

"Everyone is having a tough time as it is and if you are going to take away the one thing that is free for downtown, it is going to hurt business," she said.

Oesch believes the people of Saratoga Springs are used to a certain way of life and they enjoy maintaining the tradition of the city, which does not include paid parking.

"To institute something like this to make us look like every other tourist town just doesn't seem right," she said. "Other cities like Boston and New York have paid parking, but we are not that big, we are mostly all Mom and Pop stores that rely on this income."

Oesch added that consumers are already saying they will stop shopping downtown if paid parking is instituted in order to shop at places like the Wilton Mall where they don't have to worry about paying to park.

"It is really going to hurt us," she said.

In late November, three separate development groups presented their vision of a new public safety building in Saratoga Springs, including ways for how the city could pay for such a facility. Two of the three proposals presented to the city call for instituting a paid parking system downtown to help finance the building's construction.

One of the groups proposing a paid parking system is BBL Development whose plan would create 4,000 paid parking spaces for $1 an hour on Broadway and 50 cents an hour off-Broadway. The group would also offer a $130 annual parking fee for residents and people working on Broadway, including the construction of a 910-space parking garage. After investing around $1.8 million for equipment the group believes the city could stand to earn between $2.14 million and $4.5 million per year according to national averages.

The other group that goes by the name High Rock Partners has proposed paid parking garages which would cost non-residents $65 a month and residents $50 a month to park. they would also have spaces set aside for hour and day parking that would cost $1 for the first hour, $2 for each additional hour and $5 to park for the day. Under the High Rock proposal, on-street parking would remain free.

While paid parking has long been a staple of major metropolitan areas, there are also cities in the region that have been successful with the institution of paid parking, including Lake George and Albany. Glens Falls Mayor John Diamond also recently announced that the city could have paid parking in their downtown area by 2010.

Saratoga Springs also once had a paid parking system of its own in the early 1970s until it was abandoned to promote business downtown. In recent years city officials have revisited the idea of implementing such a system. Former Commissioner of Finance Matt McCabe unsuccessfully proposed the city charge for parking in eight downtown lots after 5 p.m. in 2004. In April, five students from the University at Albany conducted a study into how the city could alleviate its parking problems. They recommended the city put in meters along Broadway that would charge $4 for four hours of parking. It pointed to other cities similar in size that had found success through such a system.

While business leaders fret over the possibility of paid parking, local city officials are in favor of the idea. Commissioner of Public Works Ron Kim said if the city could continue to have paid parking that would be great, but he doesn't think the city can afford to go any longer without it from a revenue perspective. He also believes that the lack of paid parking has created a parking scarcity that in the long run will hurt downtown because it has the potential of deterring consumers from entering the city who are aware of parking problems.

"It has to be done judiciously," Kim said. "We have to be very mindful of making sure that whatever fees we do assess don't drive away people, but I think it is something that will help to continue to develop downtown in the future."

Mayor Scott Johnson said the time for paid parking in the city is long overdue. He added that he did not necessarily think the system would deter consumers from shopping downtown, but if business owners are worried about such a possibility, there is room for compromise in both proposals to accommodate any parties that could be affected by the system.

"Today's paid parking systems do not just consist of the old fashioned put your quarter in the meter like they used too," Johnson said. "Technology has come a long way in offering communities many different forms of paid parking."

While neither of the two proposals involving paid parking has been approved, city officials have scheduled Feb. 27 as a target date to announce the winning bid.