Downtown Business Survey

Post date: Jul 20, 2016 7:44:32 PM

I'm attaching here a copy of the survey questions that went out to our downtown business owners per Jeffrey Thomas' request.

In addition, here is some of the data that we gathered, per my report to the Board:

A parking survey was sent out by the Chamber and was active from the beginning of May through the middle of June. It went to 58 businesses in the downtown business district; more than a 50 percent response rate.

Of the respondents, approximately half of them have employees who park regularly on Spring Street (16) and all but one (Red Herring) during “normal” business hours, generally around 9am-6 or 7pm.

The total parking need ends up around an average of 68-70 employees needing parking near Spring Street at any one time, with almost half of these being part-time employees. So if we take into consideration the non-responders, the need is around 50-60 spaces.

Which tells us that we do have sufficient parking on the street for the needs of the business owners, and so the perception of lack of parking stems in great part from a need for educating the downtown business owners. We know from observation that a number of employees park at the front of the Spring Street lot for the duration of the workday, and that there are some business owners/employees who park on the street in front of their building, either getting a ticket or moving their car every hour. So this is really about education: talking to each of the merchants and encouraging them to park in the rear of the municipal lot, in the new 18 space lot off of Walden that the College has provided as a part of the Science Center construction, and in the public parking that is available behind the Field House. This opens up space on the street for customers, tourists, etc. Other than on the street and in the municipal lot, other public parking is not always readily visible to newcomers to town, and so by shifting the burden to the downtown merchants, it provides access to high-visibility parking opportunities for our visitors.

If you need anything else please let me know.

best,

Emily