Like many people in Wichita, downtown business and restaurant owners are speaking out against a proposed plan to implement paid parking in the area.
The city announced in early August that it would begin implementing a paid parking system starting next year, including in Old Town and Delano, to sustain its parking infrastructure costs.
That didn’t go over well with many businesses, which said they were blindsided by the announcement.
“This is the first I've ever gotten involved in my city government,” said Josh Rathbun, owner of the restaurant Lotte. “And for me, I find myself frustrated because I think that, maybe, there's bigger fish to fry.”
Rathbun opened his downtown restaurant less than a year ago near the future site of the Wichita BioMedical Campus.
He recently participated in a panel with downtown restaurateurs and City Council members weeks after the initial announcement. It was one of several meetings about parking held in packed rooms.
“You have to keep it simple … the chefs that I work for always told me, ‘Keep it simple,’” Rathbun said during the panel. “That's the approach that we should take. … People in Wichita, they prefer it that way.”
The current parking issue echoes what Nortons Brewing Company went through when it opened in 2018.
Owner Dan Norton said that before his restaurant opened, the parking lot to the south was free. It was switched to a paid lot by the city a month before the business opened.
After the change, Norton said many of his customers would then come back to parking tickets on their cars, which forced the brewery to change its hours.
“We shut down for lunches, and we haven't done lunches since.” Norton said. “Only recently did we start to dive back into doing lunch on Fridays.”
This is what business owners, especially restaurant owners, in the downtown area are worried about: Will customers still come if they now have to pay for parking? Especially as costs continue to rise for everyone?
“Every single one of us has an average ticket price that our customers pay when they come there,” said Natasha Ghandi-Rue, owner of The Kitchen. “In some cases, we're asking them to spend more than 20% additional (on parking) to come in.
“That's the problem. It's a huge percentage for some of our businesses.”
The city has spent the past month since the announcement hosting community meetings. City officials said the meetings are allowing them to come up with more specifics about how it’ll implement paid parking downtown.
While some city officials said the parking plan is on pause, others said it will still eventually happen.
“As downtown continues to grow, it will come back,” council member Brandon Johnson said. “I think right now is the best time to look at this, take it serious, work with Car Park and the city on … what this looks like, the cost and all of that, so we can have the best system possible.”
The City Council will hear an update on the parking plan at its meeting on Tuesday.
