Some things in life are free
Posted by Melissa McIntire on February 2, 2010 · 2 Comments
Free parking is coming to Downtown Chestertown.
At their Monday night meeting, the town council decided to bag parking meters during the month of February.
“It has been a struggle for downtown, the economic downturn has not been kind,” Mayor Margo Bailey said. “They’re holding up their end of the bargain – the stores are nice, the merchants are friendly and helpful – free parking is a token of our appreciation to them.”
Councilman Jim Gatto suggested that while the meters are covered the town conduct a study to see who parks in the spaces long term and if the free parking is abused. “We need to start gathering some hard data” to see if this actually helps, he said.
Local management will have to do their part to draw customers in, he said, and make sure that employees don’t take all the on-street spots.
The council agreed to the study.
People won’t shop downtown in this economy until a bulk of downtown merchants are selling what locals want and need. Period. Far too many downtown businesses are geared towards weekend tourists and sell discretionary purchase items. There are no essential stores in downtown, commerce-wise, that aren’t duplicated in our strip malls.
I shop locally all the time. I understand that shopping in Easton, Annapolis or Middletown is just slitting my own communities’ throat. But, what I won’t do is buy a bunch of useless junk I don’t want or need, or buy a $10 lunch on a regular basis just to justify somebody’s else’s unsustainable business strategy.
We are now seeing the downside of the downtown community being so reliant on tourism. And in my opinion there’s no guarantee that tourists will necessarily return to Chestertown when the economy improves.
If it weren’t for Stams and The Pharmacy I doubt there’d be as many locals downtown anyhow. I know I can’t afford to shop downtown even if there was something down there I wanted. As far as employees using the “metered” parking, I doubt that’ll happen, in all the years I did Traffic Control for the Town I seldom if ever ran across that problem. Even when we bagged the meters over Christmas. The parking meters aren’t the problem, the selection of stores and high prices are the problem and I have yet to see tourists walking the streets carrying shopping bags.