The City of Grand Junction's gift of free downtown holiday parking is going away.

Free downtown parking from Thanksgiving through the holidays was a Grand junction tradition. That's not the case anymore. Before you get too upset about it, the change wasn't the city trying to snag more change, the truth is the free parking effort was actually hurting downtown business. Free parking was intended to be an incentive to shop there. What was happening was that downtown workers were gobbling up most of the closest free parking spots and forcing shoppers to park further away. So the free deal is over. To soften the blow, the city says that they'll be donating half of the funds collected throughout the holidays to The United Way. The total holiday parking revenue is excepted to be about $20,000.

 

Over the summer the city increased the downtown parking rates. The better spots closer to Main cost more. Those that work downtown have since been parking a few blocks further from where their job is. That's not a bad thing. The extra few blocks of walking never hurt anyone and it has kept more prime spots open for downtown shoppers and dining patrons.

So this holiday season if you plan to do a little downtown Grand Junction shopping keep some extra chance handy to slug the parking meters. Lucky me, I live close enough to downtown to walk. The exercise hopefully does me some good and saves me some nickels and dimes.

 

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