Santa Rosa sets free parking times to boost downtown holiday shopping

Santa Rosa will temporarily expand free parking downtown in the final days of 2018, a move meant to boost local brick-and-mortar holiday shopping and placate merchants who say the city’s parking policies are bad for business.

The Santa Rosa City Council on Tuesday voted 7-0 to make parking in the five public downtown garages free from 6 to 8 p.m. on weekdays and all day on weekends starting Friday and extending to Dec. 31.

The shift followed complaints from several business owners that city’s evening paid-parking requirements were driving away dinner traffic from downtown restaurants that had already struggled since last year’s wildfires.

“We’re dying on the vine,” said Gerard Nebesky, owner of Gerard’s Paella y Tapas, which opened earlier this year on Fourth Street. “I think all the businesses are dying on the vine downtown, and it’s shocking.”

Santa Rosa in January instituted a so-called “progressive” parking system that raised rates for high-demand downtown parking areas, extended the evening cutoff for metered parking on some streets from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., and pushed back the morning start to 10 a.m. across the central city.

Business owners Tuesday exhorted the City Council to further reform city parking rules and singled out for criticism the extension of paid evening parking hours.

They voiced concern that potential customers shied away from evening visits out of fear of incurring a $35 ticket - the standard penalty for vehicles that have overstayed their time at a downtown meter.

Sonu Chandi, president of the Chandi Hospitality Group that owns several Santa Rosa restaurants, pointed out to council that a potential diner might avoid downtown Santa Rosa when facing a parking ticket that costs as much as a meal.

“It makes them think about 10 times before they want to say, ‘Oh, I’ll go back there,’” he said.

Chandi said city’s new downtown parking plan overlapped with a general decline in downtown business over the past 10 months, a correlation also cited by Elizabeth Webley, who co-owns two Santa Rosa hat companies.

“We have had so many customers in the past year come into our store and say, ‘We simply don’t enjoy shopping here anymore because we are so afraid of getting tickets,’” she told the council.

As a result, she said, the Webleys are closing their downtown location, Portobello Hats, and are consolidating operations at The Hattery of Sonoma County on Petaluma Hill Road.

Mayor Chris Coursey said he appreciated the concerns of downtown business owners but was concerned about adjusting the city’s fledgling parking system based on sympathy, not data.

“We need to be really clear that this is for a limited time,” Coursey said of the holiday shift. “It’s going to be hard to be un-ring this bell on Jan. 1.”

Maybe that bell shouldn’t be un-rung, said Peter Rumble, executive director of the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber of Commerce. He and other downtown business owners who attended Tuesday’s meeting said the council’s action was by no means the final word on rearranging the city’s parking puzzle and urged the council to standardize its parking rates in the garages to avoid confusion.

Two garages offer free spots for one hour and then 50 cents an hour after that; two others charge 75 cents per hour.

Costliest is the garage at Third and D streets, at $1 an hour.

More parking policy revisions are poised to follow Tuesday’s change. Councilman Chris Rogers noted the incongruity of having the city’s parking lots and metered street spots be free at certain times when it costs to park in a garage. He requested the council revisit the issue early next year.

“It makes very little policy sense to me why we have paid parking in the garages past when it is free to park on the street,” Rogers said.

You can reach Staff Writer Will Schmitt at 707-521-5207.