The Observation Deck

Jim O'Bryan wrote:Will

Limited parking, is a read herring.

WB Its not a red herring to merchants who need a steady flow of customers to
stay in business.


I would ask, why do you have us competing with Westgate, when Westgate is but 5 minutes away? Makes no sense. Actually makes no sense for Fairview either, but they have cast their lot for keeping a mall there.

WB Are you sober? What makes no sense, other than the paragraph above? I never
suggested competing with the malls; my suggestion would be to surrender to them
and try to champion boutique businesses with no cost for parking.

As far as owners not putting money into their property. I would say within 20 minutes of
Lakewood, a fair commute there are not an excess of affordable, clean living units in the
best suburb in the county and "coolest" in the nation. Clean safe housing never goes out
of style, is always in demand, even in a region that has been mismanaged and not served
well by the "ED Drivers." Add affordable, fun, location and we really start to stack the deck for both Lakewood and bringing the housing stock up to snuff.

WB I think I was talking about commercial property, and you have stumbled into
residential property. Sorry if I confused you.

So as I have often asked another young visionary. Do we completely change the city so
that you can buy a fry pan/pants. Or do we work for something unique that is not every
5 miles or even on line. A unique fun experience?

WB Are you talking about a brothel?

We have to stop competing, and start defining a new game.

As far as the parking, if you look at plan, you will see that very easily, the buyer gets at
least a free 30 minutes instead of 15. You would see that both the city and the businesses make money off of the program. One could easily see how locals, could escape paying anything but maybe pennies a month.

WB 15 minutes, 30 minutes. You are talking about a brothel, aren't you! I'm looking for a copy of the moral turpitude lecture I had to give the enlisted men years ago, but I think I threw it away.

The only way we compete with Westgate, Legacy Village, Crocker Park, etc is by destroying the history, the feel and what we have invested in for decades. I would say there could be plans that justify something like that, but pant stores, pan stores, strip malls are not one, nor is anything I have seen on paper yet.

WB We compete by providing alternative or superior goods and services at a competitive price. Lakewood was once a community where you could buy just about anything you needed, with stores like Bailey's, The Shanty, and Burrows. But we became uncompetitive when everyone got a car and Westgate opened and offered the same things. Now those stores have gone and they are not coming back. We are down to one hardware store, and no matter how good the services there are, parking is a problem there. I live about equidistant from Lakewood Hardware and from Ingersol's; I think their level of service is comparable, but I can always find a parking place at Ingersol's with no charge.

WB I'm not as comfortable as you with the idea of getting the government involved;
while they are apparently making some efforts to recruit businesses, they also have
a reputation of making business more difficult in Lakewood. I wonder how much the
city is spending on recruitment, and what is the return.

WB And I don't like the idea of them deciding what businesses are and are not
appropriate in Lakewood, and that type of control seems to come with the territory
when the government is involved.

WB I do think the city should do something to make it painful for an owner to let
commercial space sit empty and rot. Maybe something like a use it or lose it plan
would make the Krogers/Giant Eagle/abandoned hulk come back to life.

But it is only my opinion, nothing more.

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Charlie Page wrote:I'm not suggesting there is any hanky panky going on either. There are other questions to ask in order to determine the root cause of all this. Whether or not you paid in cash is the first question. Next question is what happened to the cash?

Here's another question for you: as a frequent parker at Lakewood parking meters, would you support a monthly parking fee to let you park at any City of Lakewood meter without having to having to carry around a bag of change? If so, how much would you be willing to pay? $60, $80 bucks a month? More, less? It would be completely voluntary on the drivers part. I'm thinking of this as a modest revenue generator and cost saver for the City as well as a convenience for the driver.

Bill Call wrote:

Charlie Page wrote:I'm not suggesting there is any hanky panky going on either. There are other questions to ask in order to determine the root cause of all this. Whether or not you paid in cash is the first question. Next question is what happened to the cash?

It sounds like lax record keeping. The City earns about $400,000 per year from parking fees which is a lot of money. Of course over the course of three or four year even if a small percentage of collections are misplaced or misapplied that means a lot of unhappy people.

The City has hired an outside firm to hand parking collections. You can pay on line for by credit card. Those electronic transactions should be easier to trace.