You may soon be paying to park on streets and in parking lots in Covington's Mainstrasse Village.

The Covington City Commission will hear a proposal pieced together by city engineer and community services manager Mike Yeager and various stakeholders from the neighborhood. The plan will be presented at Tuesday's commission caucus meeting at 6 p.m. inside City Hall.

“Every year at budget time, the city staff gets together and talks about potential ways to increase revenue or decrease expenses, and parking in MainStrasse is something that comes up,” Yeager said. “I’ve been meeting with stakeholders there to figure out if there were paid parking what might work and wouldn’t work.”

The issue had been raised by business owners there concerned about the lack of turnover on the street and the difficulty to enforce the two-hour parking limit currently in place.

“We’re going to have to start managing our parking, which means a pay system,” said MainStrasse businessman Charles Killian. “There are some of us who feel very strongly that it needs to happen, and others who are opposed to it just because they don’t want it, period. Those of us who want it based it on a lot of reasons based on research in urban planning and economic development, and we’re going to try to move forward with it.”

The business owners also cited a lack of consistency in the Village as the 5th Street lot and the Pershing Avenue lot are the only two city-owned lots that are free. MainStrasse Village Association executive director Kim Blank said that changes to the current system would likely be done in stages and that there would likely be tweaks made as the plan moves forward.

“It will probably be something that needs to be done in phases and probably adjustments would have to be made depending on what the commission decides because what will probably happen, which is typical in any district like this, is it will push people further out. So if they’re paying the back lot and there are meters on Main and Sixth, they’re going to start going back to the residential streets and parking in front of people’s houses and making it difficult for the residents, so we want that taken into consideration as well,” Blank said.

Business and residential passes are currently being issued for the 5th Street lot but some claim there is not a good system in place to manage this system. Residents in the area have found it difficult to park near their homes at times.

The goals put in place based on these concerns are to provide a parking system that encourages turnover, to find a way to balance residential and business needs, to implement a consistent approach to parking city-wide, and to generate revenue.

Killian said that there are eight new businesses moving into MainStrasse in the coming months and that more parking spaces are necessary to facilitate their arrival. Residential parking passes are proposed in the area for Fridays and Saturdays from 5 p.m. - midnight for a $25 annual fee where each unit can purchase two passes, but Yeager said that those stipulations are likely to change.

“The time will have to be expanded beyond just Friday and Saturday and it might be something that is just in place all the time honestly in those areas,” Yeager said.

“Our biggest problem, which is a good one to have, is that we have a lot of new businesses coming in and there’s going to be a lot of restaurant seats that are added and so we’re just making sure that we have enough parking and turnover so that we can have spaces for customers, the employees, and the residents that live here,” Blank said.

The on-street parking along Main and 6th Streets would be metered by pay stations that would cost 35 cents per half hour which is the same rate as current meters in the city. Motorists would still have 15 minutes free for quick stops. The pay stations would accept both cash and credit cards. Others can buy $25 monthly fees for the 23 spaces in the lot on Pershing and W. 7th. The parking lot on 5th Street would cost $1 an hour with a $2 max between the hours of 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and Friday and Saturday from 8 a.m. - 10 p.m.

Monthly residential passes would also be available for $30 a month to the abutting property owners.

The issue of income generated and return on investment was also addressed in the plan. The lot between 7th and Pershing under the proposed rates is projected to generate $7,000 per year with no real upfront costs associated with it. The 5th Street lot comes out to $27,840 per year, but the three pay stations where customers pay for their parking would cost $24,425 with a return on investment expected to be met in the first year. The on-street pay stations would cost $53,800, but the annual revenue generated for those spots would total $27,840, meaning the return on investment for the on-street parking pay stations would be reached in two years. Violation revenue was not calculated but would be expected to increase.

The initial cost to install the system would be covered by the City of Covington's bonding funds.

The meter rate compared to other cities is low. The $0.70 per hour in Covington would be less than the $1.25 it costs to park at a Newport meter for an hour, and $2.00 an hour in Cincinnati. Both Newport and Cincinnati charge beyond 5 p.m. while Covington does not.

The pay lots in Newport, The Banks in Cincinnati and in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood cost $5 for non-events and from $10-25 depending on special events.

“As a long time investor and developer in the MainStrasse Village, I’ve been wanting this for 20 years and now it looks like we’re so close to doing it and there are some people who have their heads stuck in 1985, we need to be ready to act on all of these recommendations,” Killian said. “We need to be an urban core neighborhood that provides the environment for good business, and right now, we’re inviting people to bring lots of cars down here and just leave them for days at a time, and that can’t be.”

There are some concerns raised about the plan, though. Some have mentioned to The River City News that the timing of implementing the plan is not ideal. Also, some residents believe that they should not be charged anything to park in their area as they had procured their living quarters prior to the proposed changes. Residents also say that the area designated for them in the program is not large enough, and that the hours associated with residential parking need to be extended.

Some businesses feel that it would be unfair to charge employees to pay for parking and that it might be unsafe for employees to walk further to their cars at night. It was also voiced that charging even a nominal fee in the lots would be a deterrent to people visiting MainStrasse.

Other ideas that addressed some of these concerns were to coordinate with TANK to advertise their Park N Ride facilities better and to change bus routes back to 6th Street. Another was to allow open containers in the entertainment district, and to only charge money in the 5th Street lot during special events like Bengals and Reds games.

The public is invited to listen to a more detailed explanation of the plan at Tuesday's caucus meeting.

Written by Bryan Burke, associate editor