Aurora downtown business and property owners are divided over a proposal to double parking meter fees, increase fines and step up enforcement in an effort to make it easier to find street parking.
Even the 12-member Aurora Downtown Parking Committee was narrowly divided in favor of sending the proposal to the Aurora Downtown board of directors, said committee Chairman Tom Bartlett, owner of Aurora Fastprint.
The board of Aurora Downtown, a group of downtown property owners who pay a special city property tax to fund improvements and services, is set to vote Jan. 15 on whether to forward the proposal to the City Council.
Under the proposal, parking meter fees in central downtown would double to 25 cents per half-hour, meter violation fines would increase to $5 from $3, and late fine payment fees would increase to $20 from $15. Enforcement of meter feeding ordinances also would be stepped up, said Karen Christensen, the city’s downtown development administrator.
Downtown employers also would be asked to encourage employees to park in city lots, parking decks or areas farther from central downtown where parking would be less expensive or even free. And businesses would be asked to consider paying parking fees for patrons.
The final recommendation calls for the city to build a two-level parking deck at the site of an existing city surface lot east of Broadway between Galena Boulevard and New York Street in the one downtown area where there are insufficient parking spaces.
All of the recommendations were first made in an October 2002 city-commissioned parking study done by Elgin-based Walker Parking Consultants.
The goal is to free on-street parking for retail patrons and visitors to city museums, City Hall and the Paramount Theatre, said Phil Silagi, city director of motor vehicle parking services.
Christensen said Waubonsee Community College students, Hollywood Casino patrons and downtown business employees all feed meters downtown. “The biggest offenders in terms of taking metered spaces downtown are the employees,” she said.
John Fiorelli, who owns both Bambina’s restaurant and Fiorelli’s Italian Pastry and Cappuccino Bar, opposes the proposal and said he has quickly found business owners willing to sign two petitions. One opposes the recommendations, and the other calls for the elimination of downtown meters.
Fiorelli said Naperville, Geneva, Batavia and St. Charles all have done away with downtown meters. “They all have the same issues, and they work around them,” he said. “People can go to the Fox Valley mall and shop for free.”
“It’s hard enough to get people downtown, and now we’re going to harass them,” he said. “Let’s make it easier on them and make it more inviting.”
Silagi said meters were eliminated along Broadway downtown for about 20 years until they were reinstalled in September 2001. While they were gone, employees merely moved their cars every 90 minutes from one street space to another to avoid getting tickets, making it even tougher for downtown patrons and visitors to park, he said.
“Removing the pay meters would only expand the problem that already exists,” the consultant’s study concluded.
