Parking problems on peninsula costing some small businesses customers

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – It’s no secret downtown Charleston stays busy with a constant flow of visitors and locals. The City of Charleston reports approximately 30,000 pedestrians travel along King Street in a single day, but finding a spot to park along the busy street is often a challenge for many drivers.

Kate Todd is the store manager at Copper Penny located on King Street.

“Copper Penny has been here for around 30 years. We are a women’s boutique. We kind of cater to 18 to 80 is what I tell people,” said Todd, who describes the small business as family-owned and fashionable.

The downtown boutique is one of two locations. The other store is located in Mount Pleasant.

“People will usually go to our Mount Pleasant location instead ’cause they don’t want to come all the way downtown and have to pay for parking or wait for parking. A lot of the time, the parking downtown, just the lots in general will fill up, so there’s not really an option. So that makes it hard for local customers to shop,” explained Todd.

Morgan Hill works with small businesses by helping them create content. The job often has her making trips to the Peninsula.

“When I decide to go downtown, it’s for a reason. It’s for a purpose. You got to leave real early, you know, earlier than you probably would to go somewhere in Mount Pleasant where parking is a lot easier — it just adds a lot more stress to the schedule, I guess, trying to get downtown and get things done. It’s just kind of a burden at the end of the day,” said Hill.

Hill, who was born and raised in Charleston, said she has always loved walking around King Street and window shopping.

“Gone are those days. You know that you’re going to pay $20 in parking just to go walk around,” said Hill.

The price of parking adds up — not only impacting customers but employees as well.

“If I was working downtown every day and had to pay for parking… I mean, you’ve got to budget that out of your paycheck. That’s affecting the cost of living for you,” explained Hill, but the city does not charge its locals and tourists every day.

“One of my favorite things is Second Sunday. I love being able to go downtown and King Street is shut down,” said Hill.

In 2018 Charleston City Council decided to change metered parking from one dollar an hour to two dollars. Six years later, the price has stayed the same.

“We did a survey around the southeast just to sort of see what parking rates were and it seemed to us $2 seemed to be a fair rate for an hour and it’s been very successful,” said Councilman Mike Seekings, who represents District 8.

Seekings further explained that he does not think it’s necessarily the pricing that is the problem but rather the availability of parking.

“We have in the city 1,700 – plus or minus – 1,700 metered spaces and in the core of the city, only about 400, so if you think about the number of people who are coming here for whatever reason, vying for and fighting for 400 parking spaces, that’s just a challenge of space,” he said.

“We’re doing the best we can to manage the streets, make sure that traffic turns over, so people get to the business, but again, that’s just a sheer matter of geography, space, and demand,” he added.

For anyone who is coming to downtown Charleston, Seekings suggests taking a CARTA bus, riding a bike, or walking if you can. However, if you are looking for a place to park the city is working to make finding a spot more convenient.

“Our meter heads are being switched out. By the end of the year, we’ll have switched out all 1,700 of our meter heads so that actually active parking will be much simpler. Ultimately, I think you’re going to see QR code and license plate recognition software will be the sort of standard, but for now, the new meter heads are much more user friendly,” Seeking said.

As for reducing the cost to park Seeking said there are “no plans to adjust anytime in the near future.”