Snider Plaza has been a popular shopping destination for students and Park Cities residents alike, but parking in Snider Plaza has its challenges. Currently, Snider Plaza parking is fairly limited, and finding a place to park, especially during high traffic times, is difficult. The city’s solution to this problem is paid parking.
The proposed system will charge $3 per hour after a 15 minute grace period and is designed to free up more parking spots for shoppers. While this plan is aimed at making parking available for more people, the University Park Council’s plan to introduce paid parking has sparked some mixed reactions within the community.
“I know a lot of HP students do go [to Snider Plaza] and study. I just think that paying for parking is really inconvenient, especially for students who don’t have a lot of disposable income,” senior and UP Youth Advisory Board Member Sophie Gomez said.
With all of the recent construction projects and already limited parking space inside Snider Plaza, parking has been difficult for some time. However, many community members spend a lot of time in Snider Plaza, shopping in stores and eating in restaurants, and this new policy could impact students who use the space recreationally.
“[Paid parking] just kind of ruins the fun of it all,” Gomez said. “Because it’s like you want to go to an atmosphere where it’s warm, it’s cozy and you have a drink and then you’re all settled in, but then you have to worry about paying for parking.”
Paid parking means that customers will have to monitor how much time they spend in a shop or restaurant, in order to avoid getting a parking ticket.
“You’re just going to have to keep tabs on how long you’re there. It’s just not convenient, and it’s not gonna make me want to keep sitting at my favorite places,” said Gomez.
As stated, many Highland Park and SMU students rely on snider Plaza as a social hangout and study place. These students worry that they will lose access to their favorite spots because of this new policy. This inconvenience could also push students to find different places to go, decreasing foot traffic for local businesses.
“It’s just not worth it if I have to pay for parking,” SMU student Ava Morgan said. “I think a lot of my friends feel the same way, so Snider Plaza will probably lose a lot of foot traffic.”
SMU students who help support local businesses might also be driven away by this change, as some of them don’t want to keep track of how long they’ve been there while they are studying. This new policy might make them study on campus instead of going to Snider Plaza.
“l don’t think anyone’s gonna wanna pay that amount…I’ll probably go to the campus library instead, maybe,” Morgan said.
Employees of local businesses also worry that the new parking fee could drive customers away. Customers already complain about the parking situation in Snider, so the cost of parking could decrease their business.
“Well, I feel like our customers already complain about the parking, so we’ll probably get even more complaints,” Starbucks barista Kenya Philips said.
University Park residents also take issue with the pricing of the parking per hour. While the proposed price of three dollars per hour may seem reasonable at first, the shops in Snider Plaza are already on the higher end of the price scale, and both customers and workers agree that being in UP is expensive enough and adding these unnecessary prices is just not needed.
“It already cost so much to just be around here,” Phillips said. “We don’t need to add another expense.”
