A member of the Peoria Heights village board wants to take a proactive approach to oversight of pay lots for public parking in business districts.
Trustee Nathan Steinwedel is seeking an ordinance that would allow the village to establish a village fee for pay lots, and create a buffer zone from residential areas.
“Moving forward we need to have a handle on this and understand what’s going on first, before we go and we just have paid parking everywhere,” said Steinwedel. “Then we have a problem on our hands to deal with.”
The board discussed Steinwedel’s preliminary suggestion for more than 30 minutes at this week’s meeting. He noted that a lack of public parking near the businesses has led to people opting to park along residential streets.
“When you look at paid parking, in most municipalities, there’s a buffer zone between the paid parking and the residential areas. They realized very early on that if people don’t have to pay, they’ll park in the residential areas,” he said. “I’ve gotten multiple complaints from homeowners back in that area that the lack of parking, it’s pushing cars farther back.”
Steinwedel suggested that the village should consider a non-transferrable permit requirement for pay lots, that would assure maintenance and operational standards such as safety, signage and lighting.
“My only concern is that when we start talking using words like ‘inspection,’ ‘suspension,’ ‘fines,’ ‘enforcement,’ ‘taxes,’ ‘registration,’ ‘license,’ I worry about being business friendly,” said Mayor Matt Wigginton.
The idea is based in part on an anticipated increase in demand for public parking in expectation of future business growth in the area along Prospect Road.
“I don’t want to punish developers that come to our community and invest a lot of money in development and parking,” said trustee Elizabeth Khazzam. “On the other hand, I do think we have to be forward thinking for future parking lots and future developments.”
One of the new owners of the former Pabst Brewing building said he fears an ordinance would unfairly target the pay lot there. William Torchia said if additional regulations are put in place, he may need to make parking there exclusive to building tenants and clients.
“We just feel like it’s just, your timing is not very good,” said Torchia. “We’ve just spent half of our five $5 million [investment] on a project – you didn’t have to ask us to make the parking lot nice, we did it on our own. You didn’t have to ask us to add lot lighting to make it safe; you didn’t have to ask us to make it handicap accessible.”
Steinwedel said his proposal is aimed at future developments, and the Pabst lot would be grandfathered into existing conditions.
“We do appreciate this, that you have put this money into this community,” Steinwedel said in response to Torchia. “But just moving forward, I think looking at other developments in the area, this is something that is going to be arising fairly quickly and at a very quick pace.”
