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Sep 02, 2023

Downtown businesses still feel crunched by kiosks

CHICO — Muir Hughes has co-owned the Bookstore for a decade. The used bookstore has been at 118 Main St. since 1992, having opened at 337 Broadway in 1976. From her counter at the front of the shop,

CHICO — Muir Hughes has co-owned the Bookstore for a decade. The used bookstore has been at 118 Main St. since 1992, having opened at 337 Broadway in 1976. From her counter at the front of the shop, Hughes has seen a lot.

Looming large since February is the parking kiosk the city of Chico installed by the entrance to accept payment instead of parking meters. Hughes observed an immediate dip in business. She wasn’t alone — 39 businesses signed onto a letter penned by Josh Mills, Hughes’ partner, expressing dissatisfaction with the system.

Collier Hardware was one of them. Owner Syl Lucena, who started at the store in 1956, also has experienced a decline in customers, though he sees multiple factors at play, including the economy, student enrollment, perceptions of safety and changes in shopping habits.

Hughes finds a direct connection between parking and patronage.

“Obviously everyone has their own vantage point,” she said Wednesday afternoon. “Our desk is situated right in line with the kiosk, so we’ve had the front and center view.

“The last few years, there have been lots of ups and downs in business in our community, so people have been impacted in a lot of ways. In terms of our business, we’ve been pretty stabilized up until the kiosks went in — and it was an immediate drop. And it wasn’t just us; a lot of people around us were saying they had a drop-off.”

Traffic remains down, both business owners say. Wednesday after lunch hour, available parking abounded along blocks of Main Street and Broadway between First and Fifth streets, in the downtown core.

City parking data is hard to parse in this regard. A spreadsheet provided by City Manager Mark Sorensen indicates street-parking revenue already was sliding before the kiosks, while expenses — primarily for employees — were rising. Revenue slipped annually from $646,695 in 2016-19 to $494,018 in 2019-20, at the start of the pandemic, and was $455,494 in 2021-22. Final numbers from 2022-23 are expected next month; the estimate is $394,000.

“The situation is very dynamic and has many influencing factors,” Sorensen said. “Revenue from street parking meters was already volatile.”

Lucena, like Hughes, has a longitudinal perspective — his from 67 years at the corner of Broadway and First, overlooking Tres Hombres, Children’s Playground, Bidwell Presbyterian Church and, now, a massive building Chico State is building for behavioral and social sciences. He recalls the “rhubarb” (as he calls it) when the city first installed meters. People didn’t like plopping in coins, nor did they like their tires chalked.

The kiosk system surprised downtown business owners as well as parkers — “we didn’t know it was coming,” Lucena said. “At the beginning, we had lots of people very unhappy. If you go from the beginning to now, it’s really calming down; there aren’t as many people that are as upset, at least coming in and complaining to us. Because the first month, there wasn’t a person coming in and complaining about it.”

Hughes hears fewer complaints, too, primarily because many Bookstore customers come during the weekend when parking is free.

“There is a decline (overall) for certain,” she said. “The ebbs and flows we have noticed in we get a lot less traffic during the week and it’s all sort of compressed into the weekend hours.”

Collier denotes the five spaces on First Street closest to Broadway as for its customers and for deliveries. That block used to have a 24-minute limit for parking; with the kiosks and the associated Passport app, drivers can park for two hours. Lucena wonders how this will impact availability once the university building opens and students could fit a class within that expanded window.

Hughes, in looking ahead, mostly worries about the bottom line.

“People should come downtown; they should not be afraid to engage with any parking system,” she said. “Downtown is great.”

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