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Downtown Waco leaders are continuing to discuss how to attract Baylor game-day traffic without blocking access to businesses, but their latest approach is more carrot than stick.

The Downtown Development Corp. has discarded the idea of creating paid parking zones, which were intended to preserve parking for customers of restaurants, bars and stores along Austin and Franklin avenues.

Instead, the group is focusing on assembling large areas of free parking on public and private lots near the shuttle pickup point at Austin Avenue and South Fifth Street, reducing the temptation for people to park in front of restaurants.

“What we are doing is getting verbal agreements from several property owners to allow game-day parking on private parking lots,” DDC executive director Megan Henderson said. “Our goal is 2,000 to 2,500 free, nonstreet parking spaces.”

Henderson will discuss the idea at a public meeting on downtown parking at 2 p.m. Tuesday at the CAST building, 605 Austin Ave.

Henderson said owners of downtown office buildings have been willing to allow them to be used for weekend games for free as long as someone else, such as the city, assumes liability.