Downtown Port parking debate flares up again

Siobhan Mesenbourg had a simple question for the Port Washington Traffic Safety Committee recently — where should she tell her customers to park in downtown Port?

Mesenbourg, who with her husband Michael operate Fork and Tap restaurant on East Main Street, said they are told to direct customers to the lot behind Duluth Trading Co. but that lot is always full of vehicles.

“No one can park there ever because it’s consumed by employees,” she told the committee. “There’s nowhere to park by 9 a.m. It’s where we tell everyone to go but there’s never a parking spot.

“That’s all I ever hear — there’s no parking. Where’s the relief for our businesses? It just doesn’t make sense.”

Parking in downtown Port is a source of perennial debate, a hot-button issue that has no easy answer, committee members said.

“It is a challenge,” Ald. Dan Benning, a member of the committee, admitted. “At this point, I don’t have any answers for you.”

Parking studies have shown that there is adequate parking in downtown, but managing parking is the issue.

Too many workers park in prime spots, limiting the number of spaces available for customers of downtown stores and restaurants.

That is a big part of the problem, Mesenbourg said, noting that employees of nearby businesses park in the lot behind Duluth.

“I tell my own employees, if there’s a spot available don’t park there,” she said.

City Engineer Roger Strohm said he has spoken with several downtown businesses and asked them to have employees park elsewhere, noting that Ozaukee County has expressed a willingness to allow public parking in its Main Street lot.

“They are willing to work with the city,” Strohm said of the businesses.

Ald. Paul Neumyer, a member of the committee, suggested Mesenbourg talk to Port Main Street Inc. and the Business Improvement District to get input from them.

Mesenbourg noted that the city has two-hour parking limits on most downtown streets.

“Why can’t it be metered?” she asked. “I’m trying to figure out how my customers can have any chance of parking anywhere near my restaurant.”

The city had parking meters for decades, Benning noted.

“It didn’t go well,” he said.

The city looked into a pay-for-parking plan several years ago that would have had people scan a QR code with their phones to pay for parking throughout downtown, with fees structured to direct long-term parking farther from the center of the downtown and freeing up spaces near businesses, he added, but that wasn’t embraced either.

One problem was that there is limited WiFi in downtown to accommodate the plan, Benning said.

It was also an expensive program to implement, Ald. Mike Gasper, a member of the committee, said.

In addition to parking, the committee was asked to look at other downtown traffic issues, including the difficulty motorists have in making left turns from side streets onto Franklin Street and the need for more handicap parking spaces in downtown.

Ald. Deb Postl also asked the committee to consider ways to increase pedestrian safety, perhaps by adding temporary stop signs.

“With the construction going on at the north end of town, we’re going to see more large vehicles in downtown,” she said. “Can we do something even on a temporary basis?
Strohm noted that adding a stop sign on a state highway, which Franklin Street is, would involve an “extensive process.”

The committee needs to look at all the traffic issues downtown as a package, he said, “so we don’t do one-off solutions that make the other issues worse.”

The committee is expected to continue the discussion when it meets again on July 27.