The Downtown Parking Problem took a new turn Friday when Mall Manager Allen Raynor sent a letter and map to all Mall tenants asking owners and managers to instruct employees to park in the Mall designated areas. (See map on page 20)

Last week the Downtown Manhattan, Inc. Board of Directors sent a letter to the City of Manhattan asking for parking fines to be raised from $2 to $10. They hoped by raising fines the Downtown Business employees would stop parking in the 2 hour spots which are for customers.

The problem as seen by many Poyntz Avenue business owners was all day parking spots being taken by Mall employees.

Here is the letter:

There continues to be an issue with parking in the Downtown area. As you know, the Mall is immediately adjacent to several Publicly owned parking lots.

Those lots serve dual purposes in that they are divided between two (2) hour timed parking stalls and unlimited parking stalls.

The two (2) hour parking stalls are intended for shoppers. The unlimited parking slots are intended for Downtown business employee parking. The parking plan is intended to provide parking for Downtown business employees and still provide parking for shoppers in the downtown area.

The Mall has sufficient parking for Mall employee parking. I have excluded a copy of the Mall parking regulations as they appear in the Mall Tenant Handbook.

It has come to my attention that numerous employees of businesses within the Mall are parking in the Publicly owned lots immediately across from and to the west of the Mall. This is not only a violation of the Mall policies but is creating serious shortages of parking for Downtown business employees who are then forced to park in the timed parking, which in turn causes a shortage of parking for customers. As you can see this makes us bad partners with the Downtown business and negatively affects the entire areas reputation as an accessible and enjoyable place to shop.

The Manhattan Town Center encourages interaction between Downtown and Mall business shoppers.

Managers and owners, please instruct your employees to park in the designated parking areas so that we can help reduce this problem and hopefully help the entire Downtown prosper.

Allen Raynor

General Manager

Manhattan Town Center