There really is no mystery about the retail decline in downtown Santa Barbara.
When the parking garage construction began, downtown businesses were being throttled due to a lack of on street parking. Once the majority of lots were completed, downtown businesses began to boom. Free parking times were three hours or more, and overtime fees were limited. Plenty of time for leisurely shopping and lunch.
Then, some genius figured out how to trade off sales tax revenue for parking fees with the eventual, unavoidable consequences that people quit including lunch in their shopping and began trips to downtown just to buy a specific item versus shopping. The subsequent time reductions in free parking plus larger overtime fees began the march towards the current, obvious disaster of limited free parking and higher overtime fees. Coupled with the devastating effects of Amazon, businesses had little chance of surviving.
We don’t need to spend thousands on consultants trying to revitalize downtown. Three-hour parking and 50 cents per hour for overtime may not be the total solution, but it could be the most important first step in bringing downtown back to life.
