Pam Blondin, the owner of DECO, a gift shop located on South Salisbury Street in downtown Raleigh, says sales at her store were up 13 percent in November and December over 2023. She says the City of Raleigh’s free parking pilot program is the reason why.
“That is actually huge, because we do 20 percent of our sales for the year in the last few weeks before Christmas,” Blondin says. “So it really helped. It really helped my store get up to where it was.”
The pilot, which launched November 15, allows visitors to park for free in five city-owned garages for the first two hours they’re downtown. It has had a positive impact on local businesses like DECO, according to data from the nonprofit Downtown Raleigh Alliance (DRA).
In a survey of local business owners, 91 percent said the pilot had a high impact on the health of their business, and 97 percent said they want the pilot to become permanent. In a poll of more than 700 community members, 88 percent said the pilot increases the likelihood of them visiting downtown, and 95 percent support continuing the pilot.
“Parking is still an important access point for a lot of businesses and people, for downtown,” says Bill King, DRA’s CEO. “So, it’s an important program. It has a big impact.”
Jaime Radar, the owner of Munjo Munjo, an art and apparel store located at the corner of East Hargett and South Wilmington streets, says he was initially skeptical that the parking pilot would have much of an impact, but that impression quickly changed.
“Partially because I live downtown, I just know how much easier it is for people to park than the reputation has,” Radar says. “A couple days after they started [the pilot], we had people in the store that specifically told us that they had come downtown because of the extended parking. So, right off the bat, a better response than I expected, and it showed up quicker than I expected as well.”
The pilot comes with few drawbacks for the city. Parking spaces in city decks have sat empty since the pandemic, so there’s plenty of capacity. December saw 26 percent more parking transactions over 2023, and January saw 29 percent more than in 2024, which means several thousand more people visited downtown.
The city council will discuss the program Tuesday. If the council decides to extend the pilot program or make it permanent, it would have to consider ways to recover lost revenue.
Revenue during the pilot period declined by a monthly average of $20,000, which could add up to a loss of $240,000 annually. The city is considering several mitigation options, including restarting the $5 at 5 p.m. program for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, extending weekday paid parking hours from 5 or 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., instituting paid parking on Saturdays from morning to midnight, or increasing the hourly rate in city-owned decks and lots.
But parking revenue doesn’t translate to profit for the city, and DRA’s King says initiatives like the free parking pilot incentivize people to use city parking decks for their original purpose: to facilitate getting people downtown to spend money.
“These programs are getting back to why the city built these decks in the first place, why they have them,” King says. “And that is to generate economic development.”
In addition to the parking pilot, the council could discuss its Small Business Parking Relief Program, which offers monthly free parking passes to local businesses for their workers to use. The city implemented that program in 2021 and has since extended it for businesses.
“I was buying parking passes for my key staff,” says DECO’s Blondin. “That was costing me 500 bucks a month, which, for a small business, that’s a sizable amount of money, several days worth of sales. That’s another example of the city council doing something really positive with a resource that was otherwise being wasted.”
King says focus groups looking at the efficacy of the city’s parking programs have shown anecdotal success stories, including for yoga studios and fitness centers; classes were selling out, business owners reported, and run clubs that downtown businesses host are growing dramatically.
Office tenants said they felt more likely to continue their leases as it’s easier for their clients to park and visit them (the businesses surveyed told the DRA that anywhere from 70 to 90 percent of their customers park downtown when they’re visiting them).
Customers, who only start paying for parking after their two free hours have expired, say they’re willing to stay downtown longer because parking is less stressful.
Radar from Munjo Munjo says downtown is feeling lively again and the parking pilot has been a major contributor.
“I encourage everyone to come and see what’s going on downtown,” he says. “We had 60-something businesses open last quarter. We may have already had more in this quarter, but I think it’s a good time to come see what all is going on.”
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