posted by Jefferson Provost at 3:05 PM /
I ran some errands uptown last Saturday, and, partly out of curiosity, I parked in the Academy lot. Had I not, I probably would have looked for a metered space on the street. Walking a back to the car, I passed the South Garage and noticed that on Saturdays garage parking costs $1 all day.
This is a great policy, but could it possibly be advertised any worse? I've been uptown many times in the year since I moved back here, and I had no idea about it until last week. Cheap parking is essential for uptown businesses to compete with all the places where shoppers can go and park for free. Sure, the rates are posted on the garages, but customers have to actually come uptown and try and park in the garage to see that. The rates are posted on the MLPA website, but people don't go check parking rates on the web when deciding where to shop, they operate from memory.
If you doubt how strong the parking effect is, consider that my wife, who is not originally from here, refused to shop at Rollier's for months after we moved here because she didn't know they had a parking lot in back -- she had only ever driven by the front of the store. It never occurred to me to ask her if she knew about the lot, and never occurred to her to ask me where I park when I go there. Instead, she just went to Home Depot. She eventually discovered the lot by accident while driving through Lebo for some other reason. I think her reasoning is typical of most shoppers: they go where they feel it's easiest. The same reasoning applies to any of the businesses uptown that don't have their own parking lots. I'll be much more likely to go to Aldo's or Empire Music on a Saturday afternoon now, knowing that I only have to pay a dollar to avoid having to look for a parking space on the street -- but it took me a year to learn that I can do that.
Adding to the confusion is the fact that the street meters and Academy lot still charge hourly rates on Saturday. Why the inconsistency? The Academy lot, particularly, is equivalent to a single-level garage, why different rates? And what's up with the Sunday rates? From the MLPA rates page, I have to infer that the garages charge hourly rates on Sunday while the meters are free. Yes? If so, why?
Uptown businesses should be fiercely promoting whatever cheap parking they have available, as should the MLPA, if it wants to serve the Lebo business community.
This is a great policy, but could it possibly be advertised any worse? I've been uptown many times in the year since I moved back here, and I had no idea about it until last week. Cheap parking is essential for uptown businesses to compete with all the places where shoppers can go and park for free. Sure, the rates are posted on the garages, but customers have to actually come uptown and try and park in the garage to see that. The rates are posted on the MLPA website, but people don't go check parking rates on the web when deciding where to shop, they operate from memory.
If you doubt how strong the parking effect is, consider that my wife, who is not originally from here, refused to shop at Rollier's for months after we moved here because she didn't know they had a parking lot in back -- she had only ever driven by the front of the store. It never occurred to me to ask her if she knew about the lot, and never occurred to her to ask me where I park when I go there. Instead, she just went to Home Depot. She eventually discovered the lot by accident while driving through Lebo for some other reason. I think her reasoning is typical of most shoppers: they go where they feel it's easiest. The same reasoning applies to any of the businesses uptown that don't have their own parking lots. I'll be much more likely to go to Aldo's or Empire Music on a Saturday afternoon now, knowing that I only have to pay a dollar to avoid having to look for a parking space on the street -- but it took me a year to learn that I can do that.
Adding to the confusion is the fact that the street meters and Academy lot still charge hourly rates on Saturday. Why the inconsistency? The Academy lot, particularly, is equivalent to a single-level garage, why different rates? And what's up with the Sunday rates? From the MLPA rates page, I have to infer that the garages charge hourly rates on Sunday while the meters are free. Yes? If so, why?
Uptown businesses should be fiercely promoting whatever cheap parking they have available, as should the MLPA, if it wants to serve the Lebo business community.
Labels: parking, uptown, washington road
15 Comments:
Mike,
Just want you to know that I read this blog regularly and so do many other business owners and we do discuss questions raised when we meet with the BPA. I tell everyone who walks in the gallery about the one dollar parking, and I know Ona has it on her website (and every email), it is also on washingtonroad.com/parking, all the posters for Sidewalk Saturday, a sandwich board outside the garage, and a banner on the garage. Yet I know that most people who come in either don't know about it or don't like to park in the garage. We'll keep trying to get the word out, it's a great deal!!
A post like this will help get the word out too. Thanks.
Some other secrets of Washington Rd:
Planet Art and the Art Loft have openings every few weeks with wine and cheese and great art, open to the public.
Empire Music has open mic nights and classes.
Ona will have private shopping parties for a group of gals (just like the Real Housewives of Orange County).
Aldo has live music on a regular basis, sometimes belly dancing too!
Bistro 19 has an Asian crab cocktail and with a bottle of Blue Moon it is less then $15 and wonderful (ask for bread on the side).
The Saloon has a back patio that a lot of people don't even know exists.
I know there are probably a million other little secrets from Washington Rd, but I have to eat breakfast and get to the gallery so the art buying can begin!
Now that I have made it in to the gallery I checked the garage and the big $1.00 parking poster is falling apart, nearly impossible to read. We'll see if a new one can be put up when we put up a poster about the new winter (Nov & Dec) First Fridays.
Linda
Hi Linda,
I wrote this post, not Mike. I hope Mike's wife knows about Rollier's parking lot by now. They've been here nine years! ;-)
All the stuff you're doing to promote Saturday parking is great. Yet, I still somehow missed it for a year. I only noticed it when I was walking around in the rain with my two-year-old daughter I wondered how much more I would have paid to park in the garage than the Academy lot. We were only parking a for an hour: if it had been a weekday, I would have paid $1.75 in the garage vs. $1 in the Academy lot.
I think the reason that people still avoid the garage is that (1) people don't go out of their way to find out what parking is going to cost, and (2) everyone assumes that garages charge hourly rates.
You're also fighting against the fact that there are too many different rates. On weekdays meters are $0.75/hr, the Academy lot is $1/hr, and the garages are $1.75 for the first hour and then $0.50/hr after that. On weekends, meters and Academy are the same, but the garages are $1 all day. On Sundays, meters are free, and the garages and Academy lot rates are unknown (presumably the same as weekdays?). That's too much to remember!
Also, I think there's a reasonable argument that the garages should give the first half-hour for free, rather than charging more for the first hour. Off street parking should be encouraged for both short and long-term, and metered street parking should be treated as premium parking. I.e. you should pay more for the best spots.
You have a lot of great points. What stinks is that it is nearly impossible to change these things. But I will do what I can to get the word out about the one dollar Saturday parking.
Just so you know we tell EVERYONE who shops at the store about the dollar parking on Saturday--as does pretty much every business owner on the street. Maybe if you shopped more on the street you'd have heard about it earlier. It is also written on every poster made for events--so if you read the posters that are posted in basically every store on the street you'd also have seen it in less time. Additionally, the street meters are old and are being changed to a new system which is being phased in--so they are making changes in that area. Check the parking authority website to get info. The street parking is more money because it is obviously the most valued. The idea of the dollar parking in the garage was to free up street parking. You'll never get free parking even for a half an hour because the parking authority is not for profit and they need to keep up the garages, pay employees etc. Literally from May through October posters are in the windows of nearly every single store saying $1 parking on Saturday...hard to miss.
Oh and also should mention that Mt. Lebanon Magazine also puts a 8x11 page florecent colored flyer in the magazine in April/May issues promoting the Sidewalk Saturday's and they do a write up about the events for summer and in BOTH it talks about the $1 parking. I don't know how much more clear we can make it--we're putting it out there, people just need to read.
The MLPA and Starbucks are getting free, tax payer funded parking facilities at Washington Park. Parking in the North and South garages should be free on Saturday.
Good grief Bill, why stop there? Let's open up the golf course, swimming pool, etc all at no charge. Everything in Lebo should be free!
Maybe if you shopped more on the street you'd have heard about it earlier.
Um. Presumably the uptown merchants would like to attract customers who have never shopped there before, and thus have never read the posters. Likewise, they probably would like to attract customers who are not from Lebo and don't read Mt. Lebanon magazine. (Or who are from Lebo and don't read it! Do you really believe that a majority of Lebonians actually read the magazine?)
Blaming the (non-)customer for not having paid enough attention to your marketing and advertising is hardly the answer. And just because there are posters up, that doesn't mean people actually read them.
BTW, I've been in Empire Music, Aldo's, Uptown Coffee, Caruso's, the Textile Studio, and Little Tokyo recently and nobody has ever mentioned the $1 saturday parking to me.
I am always in favor of reasonable users fees. I am also generally opposed to free lunches.
That being said, the MLPA is receiving 100% of the Market Value for their land AND a +/- $500,000 parking structure to boot. The structure is being built with tax dollars primarily diverted from the schools. I think they can give something back, particularly since the $1.00 currently being charged must only marginally cover the labor cost to collect it.
Further, if we are going to give government assistance to new businesses competing with the Central Business District - let's help the CBD as well. More business Uptown on the weekends is good for all.
Of course one of the problems with throwing "free money" around, is you have to throw enough to be fair to everyone - only there is never enough.
So Jeff, if I understand your post and subsequent comments correctly, no one knows about the great Saturday parking rates and the MLPA and local businesses should really do more to market it.
However, you also contend that no one reads the signs and giant banners at the garage, no one reads the posters in the shop windows, no one reads the rate signs at the garage, no one checks the websites, no one listens to the store owners and no one reads the Mt. Lebanon magazine.
What would you suggest to better deliver the message? Smoke signals? Perhaps pigeons?
I do know about the $1 parking, but the idea of taking the message to the people, rather than complaining that the people won't come to the message, does appeal to me.
Off the top of my head, a handful of non-exclusive suggestions for how to do this:
Pay Blog-Lebo an extravagant sum of money to host a display ad.
Advertise in the Post-Gazette, and/or the Trib, and/or the Almanac. Advertise on local TV (broadcast or cable). Advertise on movie screens at the Galleria, and/or the multiplexes at the South Hills Village and in Bridgeville.
Run contests and/or promotions in addition to mentioning parking on flyers.
Work the parking advantage into blogging by local businesses (Planet Art and Aldo's both have blogs).
For the record, for the entire first 18 months we were open we had a sign in our window noting that Saturdays were $1 in the garage until 6pm. Most of this time there was no signage at all at the garage itself.
We've had a sign inside the shop on our bulletin board going on three years. We've mentioned it on the blog a few times early on, but not much lately as Saturday mornings and afternoons have been routinely busy.
A big banner like the First Friday banners and a new sandwich board that actually gets displayed at the garage would certainly go a long way.
Parking rate clarification: Sunday parking is free at all meters and parking garages (garage exits are always open when attendants are not on duty). Saturday $1.00 rate is only applicable when you arrive after 6AM and leave before 6PM. If you leave in the evening (after 6PM) you pay a different rate depending on the cashier. I hope this clears up the confusion.
Ona Boutique here...just read this blog and had to make some things clear, last year and this year I hired interns to put up flyers and posters all over the South Hills (Greentree, Peters, USC, Castle Shannon etc.) advertising the Sidewalk Saturday events and on those flyers/posters it stated that the parking was $1.00 on Saturday. We also had posted large posters at the T stops and all around at various businesses in Mt. Lebanon, coffee shops, bakeries, dry cleaners etc-- so we DID notify "would be customers" not just people who shop on Washington Rd or only people in Mt. Lebo. It was literally posted ALL over the area including some places in the South Side where Jamie from Zipper Blues lives. I also should mention that in ads in the Almanac, and in Whirl Magazine as well as editorial pieces in both Whirl Magazine, WQED Magazine, the Post-Gazette and the Almanac it was also mentioned! Therefore, as said earlier...the message IS out there!! As anonymous said at this point what else can we do-- smoke signals??? (oh and at Ona we do have contests and promotions posted at the store and on our website throughout the year that mention it as well)
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