PID advancing in Logan Square
The Logan Square Chamber of Commerce is advancing a Parking Improvement District along Milwaukee Avenue. Preliminary studies indicate that quadrupling parking rates would raise over $300,000 for local improvements, even after turning 50% over to the city general fund. Aldermen Colon, Flores, and Preckwinkle have introduced “a resolution”:http://www.loganchamber.org/Docs/Resolution.pdf directing city staff to research ways to implement the program.
This program has much to offer the neighborhood: shop owners will get better turnover of spaces, visitors will be further encouraged to consider not driving, meter maids will provide additional “eyes on the street,” and the new revenue will allow the SSA to invest more in the area while reducing its property tax burden.
One wrinkle: unlike Wicker Park & Bucktown, much of Logan Square currently has side street resident parking permits. I’d prefer to go without the “insanely underpriced RPPs”:http://westnorth.com/2006/06/28/parking-on-my-street/, but mitigation techniques (requiring permits only in the evenings, creating a mechanism to grant permits to businesses [allowing pay stubs from companies with city business licenses as proof of "residence"], creating one large permit district instead of many small ones, raising permit prices overall and for large cars in particular) could make them palatable.
