No more free parking downtown

April 20, 2008
by Dave Alexander
Muskegon Chronicle

Paid parking is coming back to downtown Muskegon.

The Community Foundation for Muskegon County's 775-space parking lot along Morris Avenue will become a paid lot beginning Monday morning. The automated lot will be operated by the foundation's Frauenthal Center for the Performing Arts.

Downtown patrons can either pay $5 per entry for one-time use or $150 a year for unlimited entries except for special events. Special events are not Fury hockey games or Frauenthal performances but when the entire lot is leased to a group such as the Big Rig truck show in June, according to Linda Medema, sales and marketing director for the Frauenthal.

Those wanting to use the lot starting Monday morning will simply put $5 into one of the two pay machines along Morris Avenue to activate a control gate.

The machines will accept either a $5 bill or five $1 bills. The machines also will accept a plastic parking pass, sold annually but prorated at the time of sale for the number of days remaining in the year.

Those parking in the lot can stay indefinitely but there is no overnight camping. No ticket is needed to activate the gate upon exit.

"It's going to be operated as a public parking lot," Medema said. Parking fees will cover the foundation's costs for gating machines, lighting, snowplowing, property taxes and insurance.

The foundation purchased the 9-acre lot -- which has spectacular views of Muskegon Lake and is centrally located near downtown buildings and events -- in December from former Muskegon Mall owner Richard Perlman of Chicago. The $1.4 million purchase of a key downtown site allows for downtown parking issues to be immediately solved with the property available for future development.

Downtown workers, theater patrons and hockey fans have been using the lot for free since it was opened in December. Theater patrons use available street parking before beginning to fill the lot, Medema said.

"This parking lot is changing (our patrons') attitude to having to walk a block and a half for parking," Medema said, pointing to new downtown buildings that are eliminating the immediate cross-street parking the Frauenthal had enjoyed during the Muskegon Mall years.

Muskegon is spoiled with close and free parking since the Muskegon Mall days of the mid-1970s through 2001, downtown promoters say. The city removed on-street parking meters with the opening of the mall. Since then, the only paid parking downtown has been the old parking ramp on Clay Avenue -- now demolished -- and in lots for special events like hockey or festivals.

As the downtown develops, parking will become increasingly scarce and will not always be free, foundation officials said.

"The annual rate of $12.50 a month is a pretty good deal," Medema said. "You pay ($15-$25 a day) in bigger cities and think nothing of it."