High Parking Meter Prices Hurting Little Village Businesses
The Little Village neighborhood is experiencing some tough times.
A recent Sun-Times story chronicles the plight of business owners on West 26th Street. Many business are failing, some buildings going into foreclosure and several business owners are planning on moving elsewhere.
While current economic conditions have certainly had an effect on the overall economic health of the neighborhood, many owners place at least part of the blame on what they say are expensive and unaffordable parking meter rates.
By early next year she wants to move her business to Oak Park or Forest Park, where parking is free or at least cheaper, she said.
Castaneda, 45, is furious with the parking situation on 26th Street. Since the city sold its meters to Chicago Parking Meters LLC four years ago, the cost of hourly parking has skyrocketed. Visitors can’t get by for 25 cents unless they stay only 10 minutes.
Parking rates jumped 500% in the first 12 months of the city’s parking meter lease deal, and has risen from 25 cents an hour in 2008, to $1.75 an hour now. The infamous meter deal gave control of the city’s metered parking system to Morgan Stanley controlled Chicago Parking Meters, LLC for $1.16 billion for a 75-year lease.
Perhaps, more interestingly, there’s a cultural difference in how Spanish speaking residents interact with parking meters. Since many do not have debit or credit cards, they have to rely on large volumes of coins to park there and it’s having an impact according to one business owner.
To park you must use coins or credit cards, but credit cards aren’t widely embraced by Latinos, Castaneda noted. It’s common for people to enter stores looking for change because the machines don’t accept dollars. Meter attendants weren’t so vigilant in the past, according to Castaneda. “Now they hunt us down.”
Customers can’t run in for a quick pickup without getting a $50 ticket. Making matters worse, the pay-to-park machines aren’t user-friendly for non-English speakers, Castaneda and the Pedrozas told me.
The parking mess is in part why Fabio Campo took his business, Champion DJ Promotions, from 26th and Central Park to West Cermak Road in Cicero.
Here’s the Chicago Sun-Times full report, “Business owners struggle on 26th Street.”
The only people that Shop in Little village are illegals and gang bangers.
To hell with that area….ward is run by an alderman with Known Gang Affiliations and whose daddy was locked up for selling illegal ID’s out of the back of a Photo Shop in the 80′s/90′s.
The funny thing is parking meters were supposedly created to force overturn in business districts. To keep parking available so customers could keep flowing in and out of business. Now parking meters are the business. What wonders a government-corporate partnership can bring.
Anonymous September 18, 2012 at 4:47 pm,
“The state is a gang of thieves writ large.” – Murray Rothbard
I concur with Anonymous. The only thing about parking tickets and towing/booting fees is that they force the illegal/banger/welfare deadbeats to pay SOME taxes.
And fuck Ricardo Munoz, that gangbanging piece of shit.
As a resident of Little Village, you all can go fuck yourselves. ^^^
Hey Geek, I can’t believe you let shit like this stay on your site.
Hey Osito,
Thanks for your comments. While I understand your frustration with some of the previous comments on this story, understand we don’t really censor anyone’s comments around here. The main exception is slander, libel or threats of violence or bodily harm.
I, personally, do not agree with those type of comments and am uncomfortable with them as well.
But as someone who strongly believes in free speech and tries to foster a healthy and vibrant debate of issues, sometimes we have to endure comments that some may find offensive.
Hey..Osito.
If your an Honest and upstanding citizen/voter…
Why do you put up with an alderman that has more ties to criminal activities and organizations than Capone did?
Why do the MLK and GLK or whatever the Latin Kings and other Latin gangs call them selves actively pimp for votes for the current Alderman?
Why don’t the Honest LEGAL Citizens of Little Village fight the violence and illegal immigration problem by assisting the police and ICE instead of “I don see nuthin” bullshit?
Answer is….no balls.
Thanks Osito for proving our point.
Actually Pete you proved his point. And you have proved that you are a racist bigot over and over again. When we liberals take over, you will be on our list….
Geek, I understand your point about free speech. Every time I come on this site (and I do enjoy it, especially the Ask the Geek series, which you don’t do often enough) and there’s a story about Little Village or Pilsen or any other Latino neighborhood, we have the same stupid racist posts. If I was seeking racism towards my community, I’d go to the Second City Cop blog.
Pete, you had a point? I was somehow confirming your bigoted views somehow? how so?
Capt M, yes Munoz has (had?) ties to the Latin Kings but I don’t really care as long as he does his job. Anytime I’ve called his office, I’ve had whatever I was asking for accomplished. That’s what the job of the alderman is. It’s ridiculous that they get paid 100k to do that, but that’s a city problem and not just my ward.
I’ve never seen gangbangers “actively pimp” for votes.
The immigration issue is a completely different beast. It’s not as easy as most make it out to be. I really have no answer for you other than to say that I don’t fault people for seeking a better life for themselves.
Osito,
Thanks for the kind note, and I appreciate your understanding of our policy.
I will try to ask people to temper comments that may push the envelope in this regard in the future.
Just to be clear, my posting of the story on Little Village was not to stir up racial tensions. It was to point out the impact of high meter rates on some neighborhoods. Businesses CAN be affected by meter rates set too high because shoppers just go where parking is free.
I think the 3 tier rate system is too restrictive. Meter rates should be able to be adjusted based on supply and demand.
Look at it this way. I am confident the cost of renting an apartment in Lincoln Park is more than renting a comparable apartment in Little Village.
But, parking meter rates are the same for both neighborhoods. Why? What the hell?!?
Meter rates need to be higher in Lincoln Park and/or lower in neighborhoods like Little Village.
Thanks again for the kind thoughts. I agree with you we need to do more Ask the Geek columns. I will try to do more soon.
The meter rates have a total disconnect from the actual value of the meters. Consider all of the parking spaces on Lincoln between Belmont and Lawrence. They go virtually unused because none of the side streets are zoned and have lots of spaces. Yet the street cannot be “configured” in a more efficient fashion (protected Bike Lanes, for example, a great idea for Lincoln now that buses are gone) because of the idiotic contract. Now IF the rates were lower, no doubt these spaces would get some use, but at even a dollar an hour they are overvalued.
In contrast, in the heavily zoned areas, the prices are too low for the demand (assuming that you are going to use demand based pricing).
The “real” reason that the Lincoln Avenue, Pilsen, Little Village, Edison Park, and so forth rates are set high is to allow LAZ to collect “full rates” from the City whenever the city engages in any Construction. These are rates not set for actual use, these are rates set to exploit bad terms in the contract.
David….the rates are not set by LAZ or CPM.
The rates are set by the City.
Take it for what that’s worth.
Gangbangers (you know, the people responsible for virtually ALL of the city’s murders) are pieces of shit, their entire culture is one of shit, and they will eventually destroy this great city if allowed to.
Anyone who thinks it is racist to point this out has their mind so far open that their brain has fallen out.
Supporting a gangbanger for Alderman is a terrible idea, regardless of any otherwise redeeming factors.
David,
I think the thesis you put forth regarding meter rates is an interesting one. If true, the contract is even more insidious that even I thought. And if so, the city REALLY got screwed.
We’d have to run some mathematical models to see if would hold water.
My theory is this. Meter rates need to reflect the true market value of that particular spaces or block of spaces for two reasons.
1-To effectively control parking/traffic congestion.
2-To allow efficient turnover of vehicles to maximize commerce.
3-To maximize revenue for the concessionaire.
Generally, I like it when companies generate revenue and profits. If the contract was awarded in a more transparent, and fair way, where the city got top value for the meters and the financial penalties were more reasonable, I would strongly hope CPM made lots of money. However, because the city did such an ultra crappy job of due diligence when negotiating the contract, I’m not too excited about the idea of promoting profits for CPM.
Let me be clear, it’s not CPM’s fault they worked to get the best deal for themselves. That’s what companies do. They look out for their self interest. If the city screwed up, it’s not CPM’s fault.
I still believe the 3 goals listed would be best accomplished by using a more flexible, scaled pricing system tied to supply and demand.
But, David has me thinking.
Capt.
Sure, the city set the meter rates. However, there is no doubt the rates were negotiated with CPM/Morgan Stanley BEFORE they were passed by the City Council. The deal would never have been signed if we kept the rates at 25 cents an hour. The rates had to be dramatically higher for CPM to rationalize doing the meter deal.
You really need to moderate your site more aggressively. If, let’s say, the New York Times or the Guardian were this slack on allowing offensive posts, their sites would be comprehensively abandoned by most readers. It’s also why a lot of newspapers and blogs have gone over to Facebook comments, to at least make people like these accountable.
Now, as far as the meters are concerned, what the city has done is effectively give away a public asset and in particular, a public right-of-way. It is a contract that, by legal precedent, should not stand, because by the terms of the contract, the city will literally have given away the meters and then some once the terms of the lease with all its penalty clauses are fully exercised. The last time Chicago did something this unfavorable to taxpayers with a public right of way was the grant of right-of-way to the Illinois Central railroad on what is now the Metra Electric route on the lakefront in the 1860s. And that one got overturned by the US Supreme Court. It’s time for a similar legal effort today.
In the meantime, there should be an effort by the public to boycott the meters and force the concessionaire to actually adapt rates to market conditions rather than just sitting on sky-high rates in struggling neighborhoods. This is an economic development disaster for the city, foisted on us by people whose only sense of city geography is the Loop and Lincoln Park and Lakeview and who therefore don’t know that the other 74 neighborhood areas in the city have a problem with struggling businesses rather than a problem with lack of parking. One-size-fits-all policy is going to take out every neighborhood business district in the city except for those that have strip mall parking.
And why should a private concessionaire be making money on a public right of way? In most other cities, parking meters are actively managed by the city to ensure maximum return for the taxpayer. Here, we’re handing over $100 million a year to a Middle Eastern sovereign investment fund, with a few crumbs to their US advisers.