Downtown parking poses dilemma

GREELEY — You may have noticed increased traffic in downtown Greeley lately, what with all the revitalization and everything. You may have wondered how many of these people are checking out the 30-plus new businesses in the area. Or how many are revisiting a long-time merchant friend.
Actually, they might just be looking for a parking space.
A Downtown Traffic and Parking Study was prepared for the City of Greeley in December 1985. The conclusion: There was not a shortage of parking spaces in the 19-block General Improvement District.
In spite of that analysis, public perception still prevails that there is a parking shortage.
The Downtown Greeley Parking Task Force, created as part of the Downtown Development Task Force in February 1995, is getting to the bottom of the issue.
Bob Tointon, chairman of the parking committee, said, “We’ve studied the situation and tried to quantify where the needs are. Overall, there are plenty of parking spaces. The question is, are people willing to walk one or two blocks?”
Tracy Smith, owner of Just Baked!, said a lot of people aren’t. “It is congested a lot of the time (at Ninth Street and Ninth Avenue), but generally if you can park one or two blocks away, there’s a lot of space available and it’s probably no further than what a walk in to the mall would be.”
“We don’t have any magic solutions,” Tointon said, “But what we’ve talked about is stepping up enforcement in reducing the number of employees who periodically move their vehicles to avoid being ticketed … and embarking on an education program with merchants and their employees.”
The number of three-hour free public parking spaces available has recently been expanded by 50 spaces in the lot next to the Arix Building at Ninth Street and Eighth Avenue and by 120 spaces in the lot north of Fleetside Pub & Brewery.
Longer-term needs such as for a parking structure have been expressed but, according to Tointon, “right now that would be very difficult to justify.”