Free weekend parking in retail push

On-street parking in central Napier will be free this Saturday.

On-street parking in central Napier will be free this Saturday after the city council agreed to forego about $4000 of parking meter revenue to support a retailer drive to get more school holiday shoppers into the CBD.

The Napier Inner City Marketing agency asked the council to drop its 8am to 2pm parking fees for all three Saturdays spanning the July holidays to support its Napier Is Your Playground promotion.

The promotion includes a programme of events and retailer deals from July 4 to 18, covering the two-week school break.

But council staff said they preferred to test the idea over a single Saturday in case it caused problems - and councillors agreed, voting last week to approve a waiver of the charges for this Saturday only.

Napier Inner City Marketing had asked the council if its parking wardens could take on an "ambassadorial role" on the day and feed shoppers' parking meters for them.

A report from the council's planning manager, Richard Munneke, prepared for last week's meeting, said having staff feed the meters "for a variety of reasons isn't practical" but the parking team were keen to support the idea and "would relish the opportunity to have an ambassadorial role for a day and let people know that parking was free and thank them for supporting the CBD".

Council staff raised concerns with Napier Inner City Marketing that if parking was free on Saturday, prime spots would simply be taken up by shop workers and store owners parking outside their businesses.

"We are aware that this happens currently on Sunday when parking is free in Emerson Street for example," Mr Munneke's report said.

But Napier Inner City Marketing's marketing manager, Zoe Barnes, told the council she would continue making a concerted effort to tell retailers "how ridiculously bad for business it is if they do that".

Mr Munneke's report said if this weekend's free parking day proved successful "we can then roll out more weekends later in the year with a full perspective of the consequences".

A "very rudimentary calculation" suggested the council would lose $4200 in parking revenue by waiving charges on Saturday.

"However, it needs to be said that parking is about circulation of vehicles in the CBD and not about gathering revenue," the report said.