Church Parking Lot Filling Up
COURTHOUSE DECK DEMOLITION CONGESTS AREA
Friday, November 6, 2009
FAYETTEVILLE — Volunteers who arrived at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on Wednesday morning to begin preparing meals could not find anywhere to park, said the Rev. Lowell Grisham.
The church’s parking lot has been filling up often recently because of the demolition and construction of a parking deck at the Washington County Courthouse, he said.
The church’s lot is directly across from the courthouse on North College Avenue in Fayetteville. The problem has gotten worse lately, and the church put up signs this week asking people going to the courthouse not to park in the lot.
The church already shares the lot with employees of the Bassett Law Firm, Dead Swanky and the Northwest Arkansas Times.
The church provides free meals to people in the community on Monday and Wednesday. This creates a big need for parking, but it’s busy on other days, too, he said.
“We have ministries here every day,” Grisham said. “We just need the space. We’ve got a full program that’s busy every day and every night.”
So far, the church has not resorted to towing cars, he said.
Washington County Judge Marilyn Edwards notified county employees Wednesday to quit parking in St. Paul’s lot or face having their car towed at their expense.
Public and employee parking for the courthouse is available inside the Central United Methodist Church’s parking deck, located at the southwest corner of the intersection of West Lafayette Street and North Highland Avenue.
A free shuttle service runs every 10 minutes.
Edwards said she can’t force the public not to park in lots surrounding the courthouse, but she’s hoping the public will use Central United’s parking deck.
The county is paying more than $9,000 monthly to provide parking and transportation - $4,000 to the Methodist church and almost $5,300 to Ozark Regional Transit - in a deal brokered by the previous administration, officials said.
The First Christian Church, which is just south of the courthouse, has also been impacted by people looking for a close place to park, said the Rev. Ryan Pfeiffer. The church and the county for years had a “gentleman’s agreement” to share each other’s parking lots, he said.
Sharing the space became impractical after the county closed the top half of the parking deck last year and then demolished the deck this year. Meanwhile, the church completed some long-planned changes that reduced the number of available parking spots, he said.
Like St. Paul’s, First Christian needs its parking spaces for its church ministries during the week and has not yet resorted to towing, he said. Self-policing the lot can be challenging.
He recalled asking an elderly man, who had pulled into a clearly marked church-only spot, to park somewhere else.
Clearly frustrated, the man asked Pfeiffer, “Do you understand that I’m from Elkins?”
Before the man spun his tires when leaving, he asked, “Where’s a fellow from Elkins supposed to park so he can do business with the county?”
“We’re really trying our best to be good neighbors,” Pfeiffer said.
Pfeiffer said he’s lived in both Fort Worth, Texas, and Oklahoma City, where people would think nothing of walking a block or two after parking their cars.
News, Pages 1 on 11/06/2009
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