LinkedIn Post: Little Five Points Parking

Source: Ghost Coast Video — "Talking to City Council" (2024-07-11)

Topic: Local business advocacy, showing up

I went to Atlanta city council last year to talk about a parking lot.

The last free parking lot in Little Five Points. The city wanted to put meters on it. 1800 people signed a petition against it. Businesses in the area don't want it. It represents an actual pay cut for the employees who work down there.

And two years before this meeting, the businesses had offered to manage the lot themselves. The city didn't take them up on it.

So why is this happening? It's not about parking. The city is looking at Little Five Points as revenue, not as a community. The parking lot is a public good — free events, small businesses, foot traffic, neighbors — and somebody looked at that and saw money being left on the table.

I've worked with small businesses in Atlanta and Albuquerque long enough to recognize the pattern. The decisions that make a neighborhood work — the free parking, the weird little venue that stays open late, the coffee shop that's been there fifteen years — those things don't happen because the city planned them. They happen because people showed up and kept showing up, and the city was too busy to stop them.

When the city finally notices, that's usually when they decide to optimize it.

I testified that morning. I don't know if it changed anything. But I know 1800 people noticed.

draft from corpus — based on Brandyn's Ghost Coast video, 2024-07-11