No more free parking Downtown Hollywood; city to install meters this fall

Downtown hollywood florida lowres

Free street parking Downtown Hollywood will soon be a thing of the past.  If you want to park your car on the street in Downtown Hollywood, you will have to pay $1.50 an hour at a meter.

The Hollywood Commission agreed to a resolution to establish on-street parking rates within downtown Hollywood and to eliminate the three-hour free on street parking program at a recent meeting.

The City will install 50 new multi-space meters and 30 new single-space meters to provide coverage throughout the downtown area. All the multi-space meters will be upgraded to provide the Extend-By-Phone service at each unit. With Extend-By-Phone, the customer enters their phone number and the meter sends a text message before it expires to ask if the individual wants to add time. If so, they respond with the number of minutes and their card is charged.

One issue this new system will address is the problem of employees of downtown businesses parking their cars in a place for up to three hours and then moving their cars to another location to avoid having to pay for parking. This has tied up parking spaces for customers to downtown businesses.

But residents are outraged by this announcement. “This absolutely stinks! Hollywood is pricing themselves right out of the market. People are going elsewhere after the beach rate hike and this will hurt downtown,” said Guy Irving on Facebook.

“This is very disappointing to hear. Years ago I stopped visiting downtown Hollywood after coming out of my eye doctor’s office literally 1 minute after my meter expired to see the meter police writing me a ticket. After that incident I changed to an eye doctor closer to my home in a shopping plaza where I didn’t have to worry about an expired meter,” said Bette LoPresti. “I have seen so many businesses in downtown Hollywood close and after they started having free parking it was evident that the downtown area was being revived. It’s very sad that the city is choosing to go backwards. I can’t believe that this is going to save the city money. And the cost of parking on the beach is ridiculous. Even with the resident rate (which is ridiculously complicated to sign up for!) it still is expensive enough to keep me away.”

Update (6/21/2017): A previous version of the story incorrectly stated that the parking fee would be $1.50 per hour. The correct rate is $1.25.

Update (8/1/2017): It has been confirmed that the hourly rate is in fact $1.50. The $1.25 rate was discussed early on in the Parking Workshop, but when the Extend-By-Phone service added the rate increased to $1.50. We apologize for any confusion this has caused.

Author: Amanda Jones
Author: Amanda Jones

Amanda Jones specializes in social media marketing. She holds a Master's degree in Social Media Management from the University of Florida and a Social Media Professional Certificate from the University of Miami.

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