Downtown Muscatine business owners discuss parking issues

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On Wednesday morning, Melissa Osborne, owner of Creations by Oz, refunded two of her customers $5 to cover the cost of parking tickets they got for being parked too long.

In downtown Muscatine, where Osborne's shop is located, free parking on the street is limited to two hours. In some cases, Osborne has had customers who have not parked near a sign announcing the restrictions and have not known about it. While she has had complaints from customers regarding parking in the downtown area, she believes the current situation is the best in the area.

"I don't mind it," she said. "Its nice that there are no meters. The people who are the most angry are usually the people who have spent the most money downtown because they spend their time doing that. The time limit does allow others to come in and shop and interact with whatever they need."

She said reimbursing customers for tickets is just a way of making sure they still have a positive experience. She is unsure how many refunds she has given in total, but said most are to people from out of town. She encourages them to pay the tickets with a check so they can be certain the tickets are paid.

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Recently downtown businessman Darryl Ravery, co-owner of the Merrill Soap Co. in downtown, told the council there are issues with the parking situation. He is asking the Muscatine City Council to raise the free parking time limit from two hours to three hours.

"We are just trying to raise the time to three-hour parking so that people have a better opportunity to use their time and get more out of their time while they are down here," he said. "We just feel that time would be more sufficient for everyone."

Ravery said that he has not had complaints from customers but has noticed many seem rushed. He has also heard the comment from customers that they can't stay long.

Osborne commented that there will never be a perfect solution. The two-hour limit, she says, is "great."

"If you leave it at no restrictions, someone is just going to leave their car there all day," she said. "It's nice that they don't have to pay and if one of my customers goes over, I just take care of it."

She said that she regularly visits other areas, such as Iowa City, Cedar Rapids or Des Moines, and she doesn't know of any other area that allows two-hour free parking in their downtown areas. She commented in most places being able to park an hour somewhere is unusual and, many times, expensive.

Ravery disagrees, saying that the two-hour time limit is not conducive to getting business in the downtown area done.

During the same meeting when Ravery approached the council, Tim Nelson, co-owner of Good Karma Creations, said the problem he has is that there are no parking meters in front of his store and residents with parking available in the rear of the building park in front of his shop. He said going forward there needs to be a "targeted enforcement."

Patti Morrison, co-owner of Good Karma, said Thursday that parking "can be an issue." She said the largest issue she is facing is people parking longer than the allotted times. She does like that there are no meters on the spaces in front of the store.

"Saturday, when its not enforced, is when they violate it and park in front of the store, which is one of our busiest sales days," Morrison said.

She said parking in the area is adequate, but she has heard complaints about the new parking fees. She commented that many of the issues were not with her business, but with other businesses in the area where customers stay longer than two hours.

In the future, Morrison hopes the small business owners in the area can get together with city council member Jeff Osborne to learn more about parking in the area and why things are the way they are.

Marcella Alimoski, owner of the Waffle and Pancake House in downtown Muscatine, said she has heard many complaints about parking. She believes eliminating the parking fees and installing additional parking could help local businesses.

"A lot of people believe it should be free parking down here," she said. "I personally would like it to be free, because I think it would help businesses downtown and a lot of people don't carry change on them."

She said there have also been problems with the new barcode system that has recently been adopted.

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