A Flesherton business owner has asked that Grey Highlands council consider introducing time limits on public parking in the village.
Carol Wood, the owner of Local Colour for the past 34 years, was a delegation at council’s meeting on Sept. 6 and requested that the municipality look at making changes to the parking situation in Flesherton.
“Parking is a highly valuable resource, essential to the prosperity of downtown businesses. It is also in limited supply and should not be squandered,” Wood told council at the meeting.
Wood said the issue of people parking “long-term” in downtown spots has been a problem for many years. She said in front of her business it is common for a car to be parked for three or more days without moving. She said downtown tenants, business employees and those who are carpooling elsewhere frequently take up the spots that are meant to be “come and go” for visitors and customers.
“There is ample parking in the village for all these individuals,” she said.
Wood suggested the municipality consider a three-hour time limit for parking in Flesherton from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week. She suggested the time limit apply to parking spots located one block in each direction from the traffic lights at Highway 10, the municipal parking lot behind the Sydenham Street stores and at the Grey Highlands Museum lot. She also encouraged the municipality to lease the parking lot at the Munshaw House to be used for public/visitor parking.
“Visitors often make their decision to stop in or not in the moment, when they are stopped at the lights driving through town,” said Wood. “If they saw easy parking right at hand, with large easy-to-see signage, we’d be getting a lot more of those thousands of people passing through to stop, to explore our village and open their wallets.”
After the presentation from Wood, council passed a resolution to receive her information and to pass it along to the transportation department for a report on options.
“Are there ways to be thinking about tourism and the parking situation?” Coun. Nadia Dubyk asked.
Coun. Tom Allwood said the parking issue in Flesherton has been raised by business owners in the past and he was hopeful something would change soon.
“I’m hoping that someday soon we’ll have a solution to that problem,” he said.
