Santa Rosa council raises parking rates in Railroad Square

<p>Santa Rosa's City Council agreed Tuesday to double the metered parking rates in Historic Railroad Square beginning Sept. 1, a move that even drew support from square merchants.</p><p>The push to double the rates from 50-cents to $1 an hour will help finance a $850,000 plan to refurbish and expand two nearby parking lots on one-acre lots owned by Caltrans.</p><p>Councilman John Sawyer said he anticipated the increases would be controversial, noting he already had heard complaints that the council would be “chasing customers away” from the area by raising rates.</p><p>But the Historic Railroad Square Association supported the increase even in the face of hard economic times.</p><p>“We need the parking spaces,” said Lynda Angell, the group's president.</p><p>Without the increases, Deputy Parking Director Cheryl Woodward said the city would not have the money to develop, operate or maintain the two lots, located underneath Highway 101 between Third and Fifth streets.</p><p>The city plans to pave over the two lots, add security lighting, landscaping and pay stations. Construction would begin this summer and be completed by September or October.</p><p>The two parcels provided free parking for 148 motorists for almost 25 years. In 1981, the city paid Caltrans $250,000 to lease the land through the year 2029 to provide much-needed parking in the area. Railroad Square businesses repaid the $250,000 through city assessments on their properties.</p><p>But the parking spaces disappeared when Caltrans demolished two retail buildings on the two lots and turned both sites into construction staging areas in 2005 when it began widening Highway 101 through Santa Rosa.</p><p>The area has since fallen into disrepair. Because of the new concrete supports holding up the elevated freeway, the aging lots that previously existed must be reconfigured and repaved, Woodward said.</p><p>The new $1-an-hour parking rate will reflect what those parking in Santa Rosa's downtown core have been paying since 2005, when the council increased rates to raise money to build a proposed 800-space parking garage.</p><p>That garage, nor smaller ones proposed since, has yet been built and questions have since arisen whether one is needed.</p><p>Besides the meter rates, the council also agreed Tuesday to raise rates for 40 monthly parking permits within the Railroad Square area from $30 to $45 a month. The city will also make available about 20 on-street parking spaces on Morgan Street between Third and Fifth streets for monthly parking permits. The price for those would be set at $30 a month.</p><p>Railroad Square businesswoman Dee Richardson, owner of Whistlestop Antiques, said the cheaper permits might help open up parking for customers in the front of stores, spots now often occupied by employees due to the shortage of available spaces within the district.</p>