This story was originally published on LincolnChronicle.org and is used with permission.
After two summers of paid parking meters at Newport’s Bayfront, the city is expanding the program to Nye Beach starting May 1.
The rollout was planned last summer but was delayed a year in favor of more outreach efforts to the Nye Beach arts community, neighborhoods and businesses.
The biggest change under the paid parking plan would be to add meters to the Nye Beach turnaround, a parking lot overlooking the beach that currently allows free, 16-hour parking. Several streets that already have a three-hour parking limit would have had a permit system for people who wish to park longer than the allowed time.
The changes come as a way to free up parking spaces during the busy summer months when tourism is high. A study of parking occupancy in August showed that parking spots were often “functionally full” with over 85 percent of unassigned parking in use.
The Newport city council approved the new parking plan during its meeting Monday, March 16, instituting a $1 an hour rate from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily May through October and on weekends November through April at the Nye Beach turnaround.
Why a parking program?
Beginning in the 1980s, new development or redevelopment triggered business owners to pay a fee in lieu of constructing off-street parking. Then in 2009, the city established a parking district where businesses in special areas paid a fee to support public parking and were exempt from certain off-street parking development requirements.
However, past programs did not generate enough money to operate and enforce the parking program, community development director Derrick Tokos said. So for several years, parking enforcement fell off and only started up again last year.
The intention with the city’s latest parking plans for Nye Beach are intended to be more equitable and financially sustainable, Tokos told the Lincoln Chronicle in an earlier interview.
Initially, the city council was planning on adopting the parking program last April, but delayed those plans in favor of giving more time to conduct community outreach.
Since then, the city has had several presentations with the neighbors at Nye Beach, has connected with the Visual Arts Center and Performing Arts Center and held other public meetings.
What’s changing?
The 48 parking spaces in the Nye Beach turnaround – a parking lot with beach access and close to popular restaurants, shops and galleries – would no longer have free parking under the new plan. The proposed rate is $1 an hour from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily May through October and $1 an hour 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends only November through April.
Over a year ago, the city rolled out a similar paid parking program using metered parking and parking permits along the popular Bayfront to mixed reviews from businesses. Last year, the Bayfront parking program generated a little over $300,000 in gross revenue.
All the funds generated from the permits go back to parking-related issues.
Thirty percent of the parking revenue goes to a reserve for future parking use, which may include maintenance or improvements, according to city data from the first six months of the program. Nineteen percent is earmarked for parking projects, 18 percent goes towards parking enforcement personnel, 17 percent towards operations such as technology, 10 percent to debt for parking-related projects, and 6 percent to contingency funds to offset any unexpected costs.
The Bayfront parking has been a cause of some frustration for visitors as they navigate the parking permit system and as businesses and employees grapple with change to what used to be free parking. The differences between the Bayfront and Nye Beach paid parking programs are mainly their size and scale.
The Bayfront parking area is considerably larger, with more than 550 parking spots affected while plans for Nye Beach involve fewer than 200 spots. A Nye Beach parking study originally called for a larger affected area but was scaled back.
“Our expectation is that with these changes, we could expect somewhere around $70,000 or a little bit more annually in revenue, most of it coming from the turnaround,” Tokos said.
Some areas around Nye Beach are also residential, and while there may not be new metered parking, a 3-hour parking limit is already in place, although it is usually not heavily enforced.
During a Nye Beach Neighbors meeting on March 5, several residents who lived in the neighborhood had questions about the permitting process. Those who live in the residential areas around Third Street can apply for $35 permits if they wish to park for more than three hours.
“As we did on the Bayfront, there’s going to be a learning curve for people users, particularly in the turnaround where there’d be meters, probably not quite as much elsewhere, because the three hour time limits between 9-6 have been in place for a long time,” Tokos said.
But not all councilors were on board during their meeting last week with the time frame of enforcement.
During a work session, Councilor CM Hall asked if the time could be pushed back towards 11 a.m. instead of 9 a.m., since many people using the visual arts center and other locals may use the parking lot and it was probably less likely that tourists would be using it in the early morning.
“I don’t think it’s fair for us to make a decision, because I still would object to the 9 a.m. start on a Sunday morning,” Hall said.
When the parking study looked at the use rate, Tokos said, a 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. window corresponded with higher periods of use.
“I think it’s been very clear in a number of ways, to get those that are visiting our community to contribute to maintaining the infrastructure that they’re using,” he said.
In the end, city council approved the changes to parking with six yes votes and Hall abstaining. The city plans to do continued outreach on the parking fees before the May 1 start.
Shayla Escudero covers Lincoln County government, Newport, education, housing and social services for Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at Shayla@LincolnChronicle.org
