The Westbrook City Council has approved a parking plan for the city to use as a guide in coming years to ease parking troubles in the downtown. The plan calls for a multi-phase approach that could include metered parking spots, a city employee hired to enforce ticketing, more public lots and possibly a parking garage.
The city will look to implement the plan in steps over the next decade as more businesses locate to Westbrook and further crowd the city’s congested downtown parking lots.
Many who own businesses or work in the downtown have expressed concerns recently that parking is inadequate in the city and will only get worse as new businesses come to town. According to city staff, that growth could leave the city as much as 750 parking spots short in coming years.
The parking plan will attempt to reorganize the city’s parking spots so that short-term parking is given priority in front of retail or service-oriented businesses. Long-term parking will be focused in areas farther away from buildings with retail space.
The city is looking to create new municipal lots in several spots downtown for employees of businesses and possibly a parking garage, if needed, some time in the next decade. The city may implement metered parking in the short-term parking spots within the next few years.
Westbrook resident Dee Dee Richardson, a sales associate for Port City Graphics in the Dana Warp Mill, said she wouldn’t like to see Westbrook install meters in the city.
“I think that Westbrook’s allure is that it’s a small town,” she said. “When you start going to meters, that’s big city.”
However, Richardson admits that finding short-term parking in front of businesses is a problem. She said clients of Port City Graphics usually have to find spots far away from the mill.
Allan Viernes, who owns the Greater Portland School of Jukado in the mill, said his business is directly affected by limited parking in the area. Most of his classes are held at night to accommodate his clients’ work schedules, and parking isn’t as much of a problem at night. However, Viernes said he’d like to add more daytime classes but wouldn’t until his clients could find close parking in the daytime. As it stands right now, he doesn’t think they would come. “My growth in on a leash for the daytime,” he said.
Most of the businesses that are customer-based would benefit from more short-term parking, said Viernes, but the city will need to add more long-term parking if it’s going to continue to actively attract bring more businesses. “More long-term parking is something Westbrook really needs,” said Viernes.
River’s Edge Deli owner Steve Lampron agrees with Viernes on both counts, saying he thinks there are too many buildings in the area and not enough parking close by. “It’s a horror show,” said Lampron. “I’ve got people who park here (in the deli’s two short-term parking spots) all day.”
Lampron said while he thought it would be an eyesore, the city might benefit from a parking garage. Otherwise, he said he didn’t know what the city should do to solve the problem.
A parking garage could come on the other side of the river in the so-called CVS lot between Main Street and William Clarke Drive. As part of its downtown parking plan, the city is looking to add, if necessary, a garage on the site that could add as many as 500 new parking spaces to the downtown.
Mark St. Germain, who owns St. Germain and Associates on Main Street, said Wednesday that additional parking would be necessary if more businesses come to the downtown. He said parking in the municipal parking lot behind his business was easy before a new business, Current Publishing, which owns the American Journal, moved in next door at the end of the summer. Since then, St. Germain said the parking lot is full on a regular basis.
St. Germain said if the city makes part of that lot short-term parking, his employees might have to look elsewhere for parking. At a City Council meeting Monday, St. Germain said he was supportive of the downtown parking plan because it seemed to anticipate the types of situations he and his employees are experiencing now.
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