WILMINGTON- People visiting downtown will have fewer deck parking spaces available after Saturday.
The Water Street deck will close to make room for new shops and residential spaces. Also, after Jan. 3, shoppers and visitors downtown can expect to pay more for on-street parking.
Dylan Lee, a city spokesperson, said the new construction will allow the city to stay competitive.
Even though the parking availability in the deck after the construction will go from 360 to 174 spaces, Lee says there is still plenty of parking downtown.
"It's important to note of the parking decks nearby you got the county deck right by the library," Lee said. ".You've also got the city's Second Street deck near the post office and Market Street deck. Those, most of the time, have great amounts of capacity."
But some shop owners are disappointed to lose the parking.
"If you don't have the foot traffic, it doesn't matter what you have or how creative you are, customers are the most important thing, said store owner Rebecca Chipman, who moved her business to the Cotton Exchange seeking a boost in sales.
The on-street parking cost will go from $1 to $1.25 beginning Jan. 3.
"I can't imagine where people are going to park," said Eva Merttrey, who was visiting downtown. "That's just not a good situation. It's already hard enough as it is to find parking around here."
Chipman agrees.
"We see the people downtown everyday," she said. "They come into our shops and s lot of them have timers on their phones just to know whether they need to go feed the meter."