Downtown Patrons Worry About Parking Meters Coming to Downtown

DOVER, De. - Parking downtown has long been a discussion that seems to be progressing.

Yesterday's parking meeting between merchants and the Downtown Dover Partnership was to discuss the new parking meters and potential plans, including parking rates. But some we spoke to say that they worry those meters will deter people from shopping downtown.

The streets downtown have been emptier since the pandemic, leading to more criminal

. Sam Chick, who own's Puffster on Loockerman Street has been broken into

over the past couple months. He says that public safety and filling empty store fronts should be a higher priority than parking, and that he worries that parking meters could deter patrons. "I don't want another reason for people not to come to Downtown Dover. We're working on it, we're trying to making things better down here, but there's already a lot of things working against us, and we don't need one more thing that's going to discourage people from coming downtown," Chick explained. "My competitors, the competitors of my store, the competitors of other businesses here, you don't have to pay to park there. We're competing against Route 13, against Camden, against other cities in Delaware where you don't have to pay to park. We can't have another thing that's disadvantaging our businesses." Before the meeting, Chick said he went to local businesses in the area and surveyed how they felt about the proposed parking meters. A majority of those on the list, which he shared with us, were against the parking meters. Some merchants we spoke to off camera, who worried about sharing their views publicly, said this was just not the time to introduce parking meters to the downtown area. But the Downtown Dover Partnership, who will oversee the meters, say a change is needed. "What we have is not working, so we need to develop a comprehensive solution that will include paid parking, meter parking, permit parking, free parking, etc," said Diane Laird.  "We look at this as a comprehensive solution to include well more than just parking traditionally, it will be a smart solution, it will be user friendly, and it will even take into consideration things like charging stations for electric cars. We want to attract millennials and that's one of the things we need to do it." Laird tells us that money raised by these future meters would go to the Downtown Dover Partnership - and would then be reinvested into downtown development.There are more meetings scheduled in the coming weeks to continue the discussion on downtown parking. No concrete decisions have been made just yet. For now, those decisions will be put in park.