Kimley-Horn has released their 24-page report on how to improve parking in Downtown Winter Park.
The report was commissioned by the City of Winter Park to address residents’ concern of a growing parking issue in the Park Avenue shopping corridor. Their report, available HERE and at the bottom of this post, identifies the following points of concern.
- Effective Enforcement – There’s only one full-time parking enforcement officer to police 4,000 parking spaces in the City of Winter Park.
- Fix Employee Parking – Employees of downtown businesses often would rather risk getting a ticket (from the one parking officer) than spend time trying to find an approved parking space in off-street facilities – they’re all parking at the same time so spots are limited.
- On-street Parking – First-time customers don’t know they can park off of Park Avenue so they spend much of their time looking for parking on-street, which doesn’t rotate out often enough to be of use.
- Lack of Long-term Parking – Park Avenue is more of a day-long destination now versus something for quick visits, but there is a lack of facilities for people to park and come back at the end of the day.
- City Code prohibits Shared Parking – Current City code makes it difficult for the use of remote leased parking for new buildings or retail space.
Kimley-Horn suggested the following ways to address these concerns:
- Flexible parking time limits
- Improve employee parking programs
- Better wayfinding
- Centralized valet
- Paid parking
- Modernized enforcement practices
- Supply additions
- Remote parking connections
- Modernized parking policy.
These recommendations were accompanied with a call for hiring a Parking Manager to carry out the required changes in City policy and programming.
The final stop for this report is to be seen by the City Commission near the end of the month, or possibly early November.
