Wickenden Street Merchants Try to Block Parking Meters - Push Change.org Effort
Thursday, March 03, 2016
GoLocalProv News Team
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photo: Adler's
For nearly 100 years Adler’s Hardware has operated on Wickenden in Providence through a depression, a couple World Wars, a great recession, but what has activated the hardware store’s boss Harry Adler is Providence City Hall’s effort to expand parking meters to the Fox Point area. He thinks it is a a small business killer.
“The City of Providence is trying to tell us that parking meters will be good for our businesses. The truth is that it's just another tax that will harm our charming street,” said Adler in a Facebook post on Wednesday.
Adler is joining the chorus who are opposed to the expansion of meters in small retail areas around the city. Federal Hill, Thayer Street and an expansion in Downtown have all raised the ire of small business owners.
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At a time when retail locations like Cranston’s Garden City is growing and adding numerous new high profile retailers, the expansion of meters creates another burden for businesses in Providence.
On Wickenden, the store owners have launched a Change.org initiative that states:
NO METERS ON WICKENDEN STREET
We the undersigned urge the City of Providence not to move forward with plans to install parking meters on Wickenden Street. This is not a downtown commercial district, it is a neighborhood, and meters will damage the unique charm and historic look and feel of Wickenden Street. Meters will also result in difficulties and inconveniences for residents and merchants alike; motorists will attempt to avoid meters by parking on residential side-streets, or they will avoid the area altogether, resulting in a drop in revenue for the small, independently-owned, brick and mortar businesses in the neighborhood. For Vartan Gregorian Elementary School families, pick up and drop off will be complicated and made more inconvenient with parking meters. The residents, small businesses and their customers, and parents who live and work in the Wickenden Street area should not have to suffer because The City of Providence cannot come up with more creative and effective ways of generating revenue, ways that do not harm a unique street and neighborhood. Putting meters on Wickenden Street does not solve a money problem for Providence, it simply puts the money problem on the backs of those who have mortgaged their futures for this struggling city, namely the residents and merchants who choose to live and do business here.
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Shop for a Difficult Buy
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Even More Lunch!
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Out With the Old
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Gear Up
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Solve a Problem
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Buy Cool Memorabilia
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Bar Hop
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Grab A Late Night Snack
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