Over the past few weeks, there's been quite a bit of discussion about parking in Richmond's downtown area.
It started as city officials moved to stiffen fines for those who overstay the three-hour limit for public parking spaces in city lots. The goal is to get downtown business owners and employees to stop parking in prime spaces meant for customers and to start using reserved spots available throughout the downtown area, including the parking garage.
When Richmond Common Council voted in June to raise the fines to $50, the outcry was loud and varied in its perceived faults of the plan.
"There aren't enough parking spaces downtown," some said.
"The parking garage is an unsafe place," others worried.
"With half of the Seventh Street parking lot soon to become a new park, where will all of the Reid Health employees who recently moved into the 600 Building park?," still more wondered
There's a general perception that there are problems related to downtown parking, but does that perception line up with reality?
Claim: There's not enough parking downtown
The district received new tenants in May when Reid Health moved the 80 employees of its Reid Patient Financial Services to the 600 Building. The city also will be eliminating 99 parking spaces from the Seventh Street lot with the Stellar Communities development of the Jack Elstro Plaza.
Richmond Police Department Lt. Donnie Benedict and city Clerk Karen Chasteen stepped into the downtown parking question when they saw the changes coming.
"We did this out of necessity. Things were going to change, and we wanted to be ahead of it," Chasteen said.
Police and others, including Urban Enterprise Association program director Beth Fields, studied the parking situation and found, among other things, there is plenty of parking in and around downtown Richmond.
Fields identified 255 on-street spaces available. Chasteen listed another 983 off-street spaces in city parking lots.