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Lakeland considers free parking for some downtown business employees. Here are the details

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Lakeland considers free parking for some downtown business employees. Here are the details

Lakeland officials may have devised a system to allow some of the employees of downtown businesses to access free parking.

City commissioners are expected to vote Monday on a proposal that will allow downtown business owners to register up to five employees for free parking permits, called the Downtown Service Industry Employee Permit, or dubbed the Blue Dot program for short.

“I’m really so excited about this,” Commissioner Stephanie Madden said. “Having your employees have a place to park that’s predictable and free is huge for hourly wage employees.”

If approved, the downtown business owners will be able to register up to five employees for parking permits for the South Tennessee Lot, formerly Lot B, south of Lime Street.

Tess Schwartz, the city’s traffic operations manager, said the South Tennessee Lot has some monthly permit holders but is currently under-utilized. The permit fee was reduced to $50 per month in June.

Business owners will be able to sign up for five parking permits for their service industry employees through Nov. 15, or whenever all available spaces have been allocated. The city has given examples of “service industry workers” as cashiers, restaurant workers, retail, cleaning, personnel service, protective service, hospitality workers, entertainment and others in the ordinance.

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If there remain spaces available after Nov. 15, businesses will be able to apply for additional parking permits on a first-come, first-served basis without limits. The South Tennessee Lot is serviced by The Squeeze, Scwhartz said, a free golf-cart, microtransit system operated by Citrus Connection around the downtown core.

“We are not sure what the utilization will be,” Schwartz said. “We wanted to offer this as part of the master plan for parking downtown.”

Mayor Bill Mutz asked what if, looking ahead two years, the lot is full.

City Manager Shawn Sherrouse said the city doesn’t anticipate there being any short-term issues with the lot reaching capacity. However, Sherrouse said if there were ever a proposal to develop on the lot, the city would be able to rescind the free employee parking program at that time.

Sherrouse credited Nineteen61 owner and lead chef Marcos Fernandez for bringing several parking ideas to help downtown employees to city staff for consideration.

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