THUNDER BAY, ON, -- October 26, 2008 -- This is the third in a series of articles, on the five business areas of Thunder Bay, Downtown, Port Arthur, Bay Street, Fort William, Simpson Street  and Westfort.  It is in these areas that most of the locally owned business are located.  Their corporate head offices are located around  kitchen table here in Thunder Bay.  

These local merchants will tell you that the biggest complaint from the citizens of Thunder Bay who shop in their stores is parking meters.  The solution is free two hour enforced parking in  these five business areas.

In today's economic climate, the citizens of Thunder Bay, understand the need to have locally owned paper mills, sawmills, and retail businesses.  The community that has a good mix of both locally owned and international companies will be  the community that will continue to grow and prosper.

Originally, parking meters were installed to keep traffic moving.  Today, in these core areas, often the streets are vacant. This is demonstrated by this photo of East Victoria Ave. taken at 2 p.m. last week.  However the meter maids are still doing what they did 20 or 30 years ago, giving out parking tickets to keep the customers moving. 

The meter maids have been very successful. The majority of Thunder Bay citizens have heeded the warning,  kept moving, and no longer return to the five core areas of the city.

Past and present Thunder Bay Councils have attempted, from time to time, to address the problems.  As more and more buildings become abandoned, the problem only grows. A solution will not be reached as long as the Parking Authority contines working as it did 30 years ago when there was a lack of parking spaces.  The local merchant are doing their part, but as long as City Council and the Parking Authority work at cross purposes only more abandon building will result.

Thunder Bay City Council directed the  Parking Authority to ask for input from all Business Improvement Areas and Business Associations. According to an email sent to a number of downtown businesses in the Fort William/Simpson Street business areas, "The five downtown zones met on Oct 8, 2008 on various topics and due to mixed uses in all areas of the City of Thunder Bay it was agreed that a survey was needed to poll both business owners and property owners".

Empty streets mean less revenue for all
That email including the survey was sent on October 24th, requesting that all answers be returned to the Parking Authority by October 31st. The copy of the email received also included many businesses which have not being in existance for up to five years.

One of the problems with that approach is that the email attachment was not included in the email. This means that unless the business owners were to email back to the Parking Authority requesting the survey, the likelyhood of many of the surveys being submitted is quite small.

In addition, the survey appears to completely miss the reasons behind what the problem in our two downtown cores and other business districts. One of the three questions in the survey ask, "Are you willing to bear the cost of lost parking revenue? (property taxes may be subjected to .5 to 1% tax increase to accommodate changes to parking limits)".

In other words, if you want any change, it will cost you. Here is the fact of the matter, all it takes is a drive through downtown Fort William or Port Arthur to see that there are many empty buildings. Part of the reason is that people are not willing to pay for parking, and risk parking tickets.

The reality for the City is that the lost revenue in property taxes from empty buildings is likely far greater than the revenue raised from the Parking Authority. That of course does not include the improved impression our downtown cores and business districts would make on potential investors -- if there are far fewer vacancies.

Great business needs parking too
If Thunder Bay City Council is serious about fixing problems in the business districts, and especially in downtown Fort William and Port Arthur then fixing the parking issue is a great place to start.

What the Parking Authority officials do not seem to understand is that moving to a two-hour parking process is good for the city. There would still be parking control, but no meters. Two hour parking would allow businesses to attract customers who would be free to shop without having to focus on their watch to make sure they save a parking ticket.

Heck, Thunder Bay could likely sell what should be our surplus meters and offset in the short-term what could be a revenue shortfall in the Parking Authority.

In the meantime, by moving to make the business districts more customer friendly, the message to potential business investors would be that customers are coming back to the business cores. Likely, once businesses start moving back into our two business cores, the added property tax revenues would make this problem, as apparently seen by the Parking Authority, be as insignificant as it really deserves to be.