Photo by Danny Fulgencio
Problems and potential solutions for Lowest Greenville’s nightlife
It’s Friday night and you just passed Belmont driving south on Greenville Avenue. Cars are lined up bumper to bumper, and everywhere you look thousands of people are milling around — walking along the sidewalk with their dates, standing in line for a popsicle with their families, and crowding around tables on the street-side patios eating, drinking and being merry.
Welcome to a typical weekend on Lowest Greenville. Now, try to find a place to park. We’ll wait. It’ll take you some time.
Originally built in the early-1900s, Lowest Greenville wasn’t designed to handle the traffic that has flooded the area since it became a local nightlife mecca. But what to do about parking on the popular street is a matter of debate, with some even questioning whether it’s an issue deserving of discussion.
Solution No. 1: Leave home early
Elias Pope, owner of HG Sply Co., says he would love to see more parking spots around Lowest Greenville. That said, the biggest problem isn’t the lack of parking but that people don’t know how to find it.
Because the parking lots are scattered around the area, often tucked away in the surrounding neighborhoods, just locating a parking lot feels like an Easter egg hunt, especially for people who are unfamiliar with the avenue.
This is the “parking problem” most business owners on Lowest Greenville hear about from their customers — and they do hear about it from their customers.
“‘Parking sucks.’ We’ll hear that more often than not from patrons,” says Matt Tobin, a co-owner of Blind Butcher. “They tell us voluntarily. We don’t have to ask. But they’ll say it with a smile on their faces because they know it’s going to be like that. They knew it before they left their house.”
And that’s the parking problem, says District 14 City Councilman Philip Kingston — not the lack of spaces but the expectation of easily finding one.
“Every now and then I hear someone say, ‘It’s so hard to park there,’ and my response to them is, ‘Have you tried?’ ” Kingston asks. “It’s not hard to park there. It’s really not. You just have to separate yourself from the idea that you’re going to pull up to the front of the restaurant and park right in front of it. That’s not going to happen.”
The business association Lowest Greenville Collective is working on a parking map to post to its website in order to educate neighbors on where parking lots are located and which ones are safe to use.
Kingston believes neighbors should leave their homes with the mindset that they’re going to spend some time sharking the parking lots in search of an empty spot, park wherever that may be, and then walk a couple blocks to their destination.
Solution No. 2: Don’t fear tow trucks (at least not as much)
Even if Lowest Greenville has enough parking for everyone wanting to shop and dine, most lots and spots are marked for designated restaurants and threaten a trip to the tow yard for trespassers.
This adds to the confusion and makes the larger lots, such as the one behind Trader Joe’s, easy targets for drivers who don’t want to spend time looking for a parking space, or who don’t know where the other parking lots are located.
Businesses are beginning to team up to tackle this problem.
“For so long people were worried about parking in the wrong spot and getting towed,” says Elias Pope, the owner of HG Sply Co. “In the last couple years, the land owners have been working together to share parking.”
This new spirit of cooperation has been a welcome relief for establishments like Greenville Avenue Pizza Company (GAPCo), which has a slightly different parking predicament because of its high volume of both pick-up customers and delivery drivers.
“I know we’d have more customers if we had more parking,” says GAPCo owner Sammy Mandell, and it’s helped that the surrounding restaurants share their parking, plus HG Sply Co. allows GAPCo customers to use its valet services, he says.
It’s not a parking free-for-all, however. Trader Joe’s, for example, has begun hiring off-duty cops to watch its lot, though people skirt the rules by walking in the back door, circling the store and then walking out the front door where they land right on the Greenville Avenue sidewalk.
Also, Melios Brothers Char Bar will tow.
Solution No. 3: What about a parking garage?
“When you look at other forward-thinking places, they have nice looking parking garages,” Tobin says. “If it can work in Boulder, Colo. I don’t know why it can’t work in Dallas, Texas.”
But he knows neighbors would never allow it.
Kingston sides with neighbors, claiming there will “never, never, never” be a parking garage on Lowest Greenville.
“People from the [surrounding] neighborhoods understand that parking is one of the important controls that the neighborhood has over the intensity of the use of the commercially zoned structures,” Kingston says.
Neighbor Mark Rieves, who lives in Vickery Place and formerly served as the neighborhood association’s president, explains this theory in more depth.
City code requires restaurants or bars to have one parking space for every 100 square feet (with some variation), but retail parking requirements aren’t nearly that high. If Madison Partners and Andres Properties, the companies that own the vast majority of the property on Lowest Greenville, had claim to more parking, they could justify more bars and restaurants, which make more money. As it is, the landlords are forced to figure out other options. This, Rieves believes, strong-arms the developers into creating a mixed-use shopping center with both dining and retail.
“It sounds backwards, but adding more parking just adds to the problem,” he says.
Solution No. 4: Stop circling and valet
There are five valet stations available on Lowest Greenville on weekends, and the stand shared by HG Sply Co., Blind Butcher or Truck Yard is complimentary and all open to anyone patronizing shops and restaurants on the avenue.
The problem, says Nestor Gonzalez, a runner for Dallas Valet on Lowest Greenville, is that valets regularly run out of parking spaces on Friday and Saturday nights, forcing them to shut down until spots open.
In search of a solution, businesses have sought the expertise of Pamè La Ashford, the city’s longtime program manager for parking services and enforcement.
Right now Ashford is working on a comprehensive plan for the valet services. In the next few months she hopes to enact a “corporation level valet service concept” that will be accessible to all businesses on Lowest Greenville. There would be multiple stands spaced out along the avenue accompanied by “maneuvering zones” approved by the city to ensure “less negative impact on traffic flow and quality of life of the surrounding entities.”
Once this is set up, educating the community will be key, particularly to encourage neighbors to use the valet services provided.
Solution No. 5: Walk, bike or Über
Kingston’s solution is that Dallasites should use this as an opportunity to get over their need to drive everywhere.
“If we can’t get passed that as a city, Dallas isn’t going to be a forward-thinking city,” he says. “We’re going to be a stunted hybrid where people can’t stand to do anything without their cars.”
The city spent $1.3 million in recent years to make the avenue more pedestrian and cyclist friendly, plus, pedestrians are beneficial for the avenue’s retail shops. Places like Steel City Pops and Dude, Sweet Chocolate pick up plenty of foot traffic as people meander the avenue.
So walk or ride your bike, Kingston says, and if you live too far away, just use Über.
Ultimately, if businesses, the city and the neighborhoods continue to work together, “and we don’t do anything except what we thinks benefits Lowest Greenville,” Pope says, he believes the parking problems will work themselves out.
“Everybody has their own struggles and fixes when it comes to the parking scenario,” Pope says. “It’s a work in progress.”
