Potential joint committee to address parking discussed

By Megan Kelley
Staff Writer
OXFORD – The Oxford Village Council scheduled two public hearings for Feb. 13 and had a lengthy conversation on possible ways to address concerns about parking in the northeast quadrant of the downtown at its first meeting of 2024.
The public hearings will be for the new village purchasing ordinance and the Downtown Development Authority TIF (Tax Increment Financing) plan.
The council approved the second reading of its amended purchasing ordinance at its meeting on Jan. 9.
The DDA has been working with community planning and design consulting company McKenna to update its TIF plan. The plan itself essentially lays out the goals and objectives of the Oxford DDA moving forward which include economic vitality, design, promotion and organization, as well as establishes the taxing jurisdiction.
The entire TIF plan can be found in the DDA Board of Director’s Dec. 18 meeting agenda packet.
Also in the meeting, several business owners whose businesses back up to the parking lot in the northeast section of the downtown spoke about the parking issues that they fear will turn an already busy lot into one that is so busy it will negatively impact their businesses.
Concerns about the public parking lot are not new, but with the introduction of a new event space in that same quadrant, business owners have only grown more worried that should there be a large event there, the parking lot will be full for hours and eventually end up impacting the neighboring businesses.
“Our parking lot is extremely busy. Between Red Knapp’s, us and GravCap, there are a lot of people using that parking lot. The restaurant parking, for us, at the most critical times are around 6 (p.m.) especially on the weekend. You have a wedding venue, if he has a wedding, that’s going to be 5 or 6 (p.m.) that people get there and park. But they’re not going to be like the restaurant people that are leaving after an hour-and-a-half or two hours, they’re going to be there all night,” said John Powers, owner of HomeGrown Brewing Company. “If you take away our parking spaces – and we already hear that, ‘Oh, I wanted to come to your place but we couldn’t find a parking spot.’ That’s happened and that could destroy us, it really could.”
DDA Executive Director Kelly Westbrook said she is in communication with business onwers about the parking lot.
“The parking is definitely an issue that we’ve heard a lot about not only with the new owner, but with the business owners that I work with on a daily basis. A lot of them in that quadrant, I talk to on a weekly basis. So, I just wanted to let them know that the DDA is definitely concerned and trying to find solutions,” said Westbook.
Ideas that have been pitched to potentially quell the concerns include working with NOTA to shuttle those who are attending an event at The Dealership to and from Oxford Marketplace, which is located just south of the downtown, or maybe re-striping the lot to see if more spaces can be added.
Business owners requested more discussion on what remedies can potentially be implemented to avoid parking becoming an even bigger issue and council members agreed to hold a less formal meeting where some members of council, members of the DDA Board and members of the planning commission can meet with business owners to further discuss the problem and possible paths forward.