That Garage

The phone rang just half an hour before our event with Bishop Gene Robinson.

“I was calling to see if your event with the Bishop was still tonight,” came a voice of a certain age.

“It sure is,” I replied. “Hope to see you here.”

“Will there be plenty of on-street parking? That road race is tonight, and part of Main Street is closed, and I don’t want to have to walk far.”

I have a ready-made answer for that one, now. “Ah, you can use the garage. It’s free after 5 PM, there’s plenty of space, and you walk out of it 20 feet from our door.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I won’t use the garage. Everyone says it’s awful. The paper said so, too. I’m not going to do that. Don’t you think there’s enough parking on the street?”

It depends on how far you’re willing to walk, I thought to myself. We only have six spaces on our side of the block now. Freight Street is gone, our temporary diagonal parking is gone, and Capital Commons swallowed all the spaces on its side of Main Street. The garage was supposed to be the answer. I tried again: “Oh, no, the paper said that the garage was a great unused resource, and just needs a few tweaks and some marketing to make it a success. I have the article right here.”

“Huh, that’s not what I heard,” she said, and hung up in my ear.

Well, I’m not sure if she came to hear the Bishop or not. We had plenty of people, anyway, and I think a lot of them used the garage. To their chagrin!

My wife came in at 7:30, while the Bishop was speaking. “Did you know that there’s a line of 20 cars all trying to get out of the garage?” she whispered. “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said. “Nope, not kidding, it’s all those road racers, someone forgot to validate their ticket on the Main Street level, so everyone has to wait while they sort it out.”

I guess the lady was right. That experience was repeated when my wife left to get the kids after their music lessons—her ticket jammed, and she had to wait 10 minutes for an officer to open the gate.

Needless to say, I have done a lot of thinking about this garage. Adequate parking is life itself to a retailer. And the revitalization of this entire end of Main Street depends on the success of the garage.

What’s more, I have done a lot of cheerleading for the garage. In email after email I have extolled its virtues. We’ve even been offering coupons for 30% off any one book if you use the garage. Only three people have taken us up on that, as opposed to the hundreds of people who have used our new “Sunday shopping” coupons. Coupons work, but the garage isn’t working.

Sadly, that’s the conclusion I’ve come to. The garage isn’t working.

Two weeks ago, The Insider ran an article outlining a few quick fixes that can make the garage a lot more user friendly. The City has not adopted them, nor even to my knowledge responded to the Insider article at all. Here is my quick version of that list, for the City’s benefit:

1) Move one of the ticket validation machines to the Storrs Street level, right next to the gates. I don’t want to hear how much it would cost—that’s a ludicrous argument compared to how much an abandoned garage would cost. The machine should have been down there to begin with. Fix your mistake.

2) Start marketing the thing. Put appropriate signage throughout the neighborhood. Run promotions, generate news, get creative. Put reminders about the garage in with parking tickets issued on the street, for Pete’s sake. (Great idea, Mark.)

3) Think about ways to get people to adopt it. Sacrifice a little short term revenue to rescue your multi-million dollar investment. For instance, after that road race, why didn’t you just leave the gates up from 6 PM on? You knew lots of people would be parking in there after 5. So what if a few people who had parked there earlier got away with free parking? You would have had a hundred people sharing a great new experience with their friends, instead of who knows how many people grumbling to all their friends about how lousy the garage is.

The problem is that no one city official is responsible for the success of this garage. Getting it built, sure, but getting people to use it? No one’s job.

It needs to be someone’s job. I challenge the mayor and the city council to make that happen. One important key to downtown revitalization has already been built. Let’s make it work.

(If you would like to write to the Mayor and City Council on this or any other issue, click here.)