If the people calling themselves the “City of Keene” actually cared about business owners, they’d eliminate the parking department that is driving customers OUT of the downtown. Another letter to the Sentinel was published this Friday from a local business owner, this time by John Croteau of Syd’s Carpet and Snooze Room. Croteau explains he’s lost countless frustrated customers over the years since parking meters were installed in Keene:
Do parking meter cost increases, doubling parking fines and increasing the hours for plugging the meters from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. make Keene a friendlier, more inviting place to shop?
If Nathaniel Stout (“Parking increases are the only fair way,” April 16) thinks so, he is wrong.
I have been in business on St. James Street for well over 45 years and I can tell you there is no bigger drawback to shopping in Downtown Keene than the parking meters and parking fines. It would be very unusual for our customers to choose new flooring, bedding or furniture in less than 30 minutes. So when they lose track of time and find a ticket on their windshields upon exiting our store, they get extremely upset. I have heard many customers make the comment (even after I pay their tickets) that they will never shop Downtown Keene again.
And unfortunately many do not return.
I often talk about beautiful Downtown Keene and express the virtues of the city, but the reason the malls are so successful is because it costs the customer nothing to shop there. Our downtown is starting to lose stores once again and the shopping centers seem to be on the rise. There are new owners at the Colony Mill and the Monadnock Marketplace and they will be very aggressive in filling those empty spaces. Let’s not just play musical chairs with our downtown businesses. We don’t want them going back to the shopping centers and have downtown Keene empty again. Let’s do all we can to support our downtown merchants and make Keene the No. 1 place to shop and visit. Merchants need the traffic and more expensive fees and fines are not the way to do it.
I have submitted a petition to the City Clerk’s office with signatures of not only downtown merchants but also many of the shopping public. Everyone I talk to thinks that during this economic slow time is not the time to increase the cost to shop Downtown Keene.
If Stout thinks the merchants in Downtown Keene have enjoyed a 31.26 percent increase over the past 12 years, he is dead wrong once again.
Please help Downtown Keene stay vibrant and at the very least leave the parking meters alone.
John Croteau Jr.
