From Amy Gutzmer
Monroe
My thoughts on the new housing complex proposed for the downtown: I respect what the city is trying to do but I have some concerns, as do many other business owners. The city has spent a huge sum of money to renovate the downtown. We need businesses to attract customers to use our downtown. Is it not our job to keep businesses downtown and to attract potential new businesses to move downtown.
To do that, we need to provide adequate parking for us and our customers - not to mention the numerable downtown residents living here already. My observation is that the parking areas are all well used during the daytime business hours.
We do not want to drive businesses to seek shop space away from the Square or for their customers to be inconvenienced by lack of adequate parking in a reasonable distance to the business.
I feel we'd better think long and hard on this one as not to forget the present and the future business owners and downtown residents versus the need to provide living accommodations that could go elsewhere. Many already park in these parking lots and walk a distance to work so their customers can use the closer, out- front parking. This could really make things a lot harder for many of our downtown businesses. Do you really need to do this?
Monroe
My thoughts on the new housing complex proposed for the downtown: I respect what the city is trying to do but I have some concerns, as do many other business owners. The city has spent a huge sum of money to renovate the downtown. We need businesses to attract customers to use our downtown. Is it not our job to keep businesses downtown and to attract potential new businesses to move downtown.
To do that, we need to provide adequate parking for us and our customers - not to mention the numerable downtown residents living here already. My observation is that the parking areas are all well used during the daytime business hours.
We do not want to drive businesses to seek shop space away from the Square or for their customers to be inconvenienced by lack of adequate parking in a reasonable distance to the business.
I feel we'd better think long and hard on this one as not to forget the present and the future business owners and downtown residents versus the need to provide living accommodations that could go elsewhere. Many already park in these parking lots and walk a distance to work so their customers can use the closer, out- front parking. This could really make things a lot harder for many of our downtown businesses. Do you really need to do this?
