Downtown parking a breeze in Woodstock

Jim Hagarty
Editor
The city of Woodstock has seen the future and it doesn't involve parking meters in the downtown area.

While Stratford still struggles to devise a workable system of core-area parking that would benefit motorists and merchants without leaving some people frustrated with no place to park, Woodstock seems to have turned the corner on the issues it once had.

Woodstock does not have a Festival Theatre with the hundreds of thousands of tourists that such a popular attraction draws, but it is not without its charm and appeal and being located next to Highway 401, it is a convenient spot for travellers.

In a telephone interview Friday, Mayor Michael Harding was careful to say that his city does not have free parking in the downtown area. What it does have is free two-hour parking downtown after which motorists have to leave or move to a paid lot, a system that is strictly enforced.

Harding said the system works well for merchants, because the two-hour limit gives people who are dining or shopping time to accomplish what they need to before they must move on.

But there is another reason for the time limit. Preventing downtown store and office staff from occupying spaces all day is a constant challenge.

“We apply rigorous enforcement to keep the flow of shoppers,” said Harding.

The tires of parked downtown cars are given a chalk mark by an officer and watched for the two-hour limit. Even the mayor’s tires get chalked – twice in the past month, in fact.

“I have to play by the rules,” he said.

And when he’s been chalked?

“I get the heck out of there.”

Parking is totally free after 6 p.m. and there is no parking from 2-5 a.m. anywhere in the city.

Despite all this generosity, Woodstock doesn’t turn its back on parking-related funds.

“The city is in the parking business,” said Harding. “Any fines go into a fund for additional parking spaces someday.” It’s the only revenue, in fact, the city is allowed to keep. All other money from traffic violations or parking rates goes to the County of Oxford to which Woodstock belongs.

As well, new businesses locating in the downtown, in lieu of the number of parking spaces they are required to have, can pay into a fund, according to a set formula. The fund is used for the creation of additional parking. For example, the city has inked a deal with a new downtown 50-room hotel to give it 40 per cent of a nearby, underused municipal lot after 3 p.m. each day for a rate of $500 a month for the next 19 years.

At the same time, the rules must be “flexible and dynamic” because council needs to see the economic spinoff, the mayor said. The new hotel has no restaurant, so its customers will be dining and shopping downtown.

“It will have benefits,” said Harding. “That’s why we didn’t demand $80,000 up front.”

“In the ‘90s we got rid of parking meters,” said the mayor. “All the poles are gone. That’s the approach we’re taking.”

Despite how well the system is working, the mayor said the city is getting into the upper limit of available spaces and in the next few years will have to consider creating more spots by “stacking” on a downtown lot as real estate values in the core continue to climb. Stratford, too, has batted around the idea of a parking garage for years.

Regardless of the system used, Harding said Woodstock is committed to it.

“The municipality is in the business of relieving the burden of the downtown retailers,” he said.

Most importantly, the downtown Business Improvement Area is happy with the parking rates that are in place.

But nothing’s perfect.

“We have an old bad habit in Woodstock, if you can’t park in front of a store, you move on,” said Harding. “Retailers lose the business. We’ve got to get over that bad habit of not wanting to walk to those shops.

Michael Mannapso, of the city’s bylaw enforcement office, told the Gazette that Woodstock has a downtown bylaw enforcement officer who works four days a week.

The city has the usual on-street accessible disabled parking, no stopping and no loading zones, as well as fire hydrant restrictions, angle parking and regular parking.

As well as the free two-hour street parking downtown, there are a couple of lots where people can also park free, also for two hours. And there are three “pay-and display” lots near the downtown where, for $1, motorists can park for the whole day.

Mannapso said the city tries to be accommodating for downtown events such as parades and sidewalk sales.

Fines for breaking the downtown two-hour limit range from $10 for early payment to $15. Fines for all other parking infractions range from $15 to $25.

PHOTO: How many more years will Stratford hang onto its parking meters, when so many nearby communities have long ago abandoned them? (Jim Hagarty)