Parking tickets are gracing the windshields of cars in Danville’s River District for the first time in several years.
Downtown businesses, customers and residents have spent the last two months becoming accustomed to a reinvigorated effort around timed parking enforcement, prompted by the city’s continued growth.
Before June, signs depicting the time limit for parking on a certain street didn’t mean much. The limits weren’t enforced, and cars sat all day in parking spaces designated for one-hour or two-hour use.
This impacted foot traffic for downtown businesses, created a headache for residents and visitors, and wasn’t conducive to the city’s continuing growth, said Danville Police Chief Chris Wiles.
“We knew this was going to come to a head,” Wiles said. “We couldn’t keep doing it the way we had always done it.”
The city partnered with Pivot Parking, a South Carolina-based company that manages parking programs across the Southeast.
Pivot is responsible for the enforcement of timed parking, which is done with license plate reader technology, and for ticketing.
After about 10 days of written warnings when enforcement first began in early June, Pivot is now handing out citations with varying fees depending on the violation. Most parking tickets are $25, though this amount increases for parking in a fire lane or other restricted area.
The parking program is designed to accommodate “all of the different and competing needs” for folks downtown, said Brandon Lauterbach, co-founder and executive vice president of Pivot.
That includes residents, visitors, customers, merchants and employees, he said.
Parking enforcement in Danville isn’t new, but it’s been at least two years since the city had a full-time parking enforcement officer working consistently. Bringing it back has become a hot topic of conversation, Lauterbach said.
“People were used to just parking wherever they wanted whenever they wanted, and the fact that that’s no longer the case may have ruffled some feathers,” said Lauterbach. “But everybody has a part to play in the parking environment.”
Partnering with Pivot
Years ago, parking was enforced by part-time police department employees who used chalk to mark car tires that had been in a spot for too long.
It was a low-tech, inefficient process, Wiles said. Turnover for those part-time employees was high, and enforcement became lax, he said, resulting in a public perception that there were no consequences for ignoring parking time limits.
As the city continued to grow, that had to change, he said.
Public parking spaces in the River District include timed street parking as well as longer-term options, like unlimited-time street parking, surface lots and one parking garage.
There are more residences in the River District now than ever before, but this is not the sole reason for the city’s parking troubles. Most of the apartment buildings are congregated on Bridge Street, where public surface parking lots with no time limits are available to residents.
Most of the parking congestion revolves around Main Street, where there is a one-hour parking time limit.
A new parking garage on Spring Street is in the early stages of development, but the city couldn’t wait for that to happen — or treat it as a solution to all of its parking problems, Wiles said.
Conversations about a revamped approach to parking started about a year ago, he said. They actually began in the city’s economic development department, rather than the police department.
“Economic development saw the significant activity, particularly residential development, that’s going on in the River District,” Wiles said. “You look at how many former tobacco warehouses have been converted to residential use, we’ve got other businesses coming downtown, we’ve got a riverfront park on the cusp of opening. … That’s what the city was up against.”
That department started conversations with the police department and other groups, like public works and the city manager’s office, Wiles said.
After that initial conversation, the city worked with a parking consultant to create a study, informed by community input, about the city’s parking needs.
The study led the city to Pivot, which offered a modern, efficient approach to parking programming, Wiles said.
The company created a presence in the city, hiring an operations manager and a local parking ambassador, who drives a city car branded with Pivot’s logo around the River District.
On top of the car are license plate reader cameras, used to identify and digitally mark cars that are in violation of parking time limits.
“That [technology] is a substitute for having somebody on a bicycle or on foot, literally chalking a tire,” Lauterbach said.
The LPRs can accurately track the amount of time someone has been parked in one place, he said.
Even though Pivot is using high-tech equipment to track parking, a paper citation will still appear on a car’s windshield when there’s a violation, Lauterbach said.
In the past, the only options were to mail a check or money order or go to the city’s central collections department in person to pay the ticket.
Now, scofflaws can also pay online and by phone.
“If you do unfortunately get a ticket, this makes dealing with it a much simpler process,” Wiles said. 
Adjusting to enforcement
Catherine Carter, owner of the Dog-Eared Page, witnessed the decline of parking enforcement firsthand from her storefront on Main Street.
“I’ve been here for almost four years, and when I first started, there were meter maids and it was being enforced,” Carter said.
As parking enforcement decreased, so did foot traffic in the bookstore, she said.
“I would have people come in on a Saturday, saying, ‘I tried to come in earlier in the week, but there was no parking,’” Carter said. “We were having a lot of issues with that, so it was affecting business negatively.”
Carter said she has a regular customer with ADA needs who sends someone into the store to pick up a book order instead of coming in to browse because no nearby parking spots are available.
There is a public parking lot across Main Street from the Dog-Eared Page and street parking spaces on both sides of the road. These spaces are often full, Carter said.
The city’s parking study found that employees of downtown businesses often parked all day in street parking spaces, which business owners want patrons to use.
“They would park in front of their business, or they would park up in the street in front of somebody else’s business,” Wiles said. “Then, of course, the complaints we would get from retailers is that, hey, my customers don’t have a place to park.”
Since parking enforcement began in June, Carter said she has noticed a small uptick in foot traffic.
Susan Moss, however, has noticed the opposite.
Moss is the owner of Moss Mountain Outfitters, an outdoor clothing store located down the Main Street hill from the Dog-Eared Page.
The storefront is near an Italian restaurant, a bakery and a frozen yogurt shop, and Moss said she’s used to getting traffic from folks who come to the River District to eat.
But since the one-hour time limit on parking is now enforced, visitors are less likely to shop after their lunch, she said.
“After they eat, instead of moving their car and coming back to shop, they just leave,” Moss said. “I think, for Main Street very specifically, one hour is too limiting, and it could lead to a negative impact on this road.”
The River District Association, a nonprofit that coordinates public-private partnerships and programming in the River District, anticipated both of these responses.
“Any parking change brings both benefits and challenges for different members of our community,” Shane Brogden, director of communications for the RDA, said in an email.
Pivot wants to hear this feedback, Lauterbach said. It has a local operations manager, John Riggins, who’s collecting input that might inform future adjustments.
“John is on site, going door-to-door, getting feedback directly from merchants, developers, everyone in the River District,” Lauterbach said. “We’re not making any immediate changes without the approval of the city, but we do want to hear this feedback.”
Eventually, Pivot will present recommendations to the city, and changes could be made to time limits at that point, he said.
The company might also suggest changes based on information from the LPRs. Data gathered by Pivot’s LPRs will not be used for surveillance or policing purposes, Wiles said.
Instead, the readers can look at parking occupancy on different blocks to pinpoint areas of the River District where citations are more common.
That might also lead to adjustments in time limits or other tweaks, Lauterbach said.
Paid parking coming soon?
The city has no plans to implement paid parking alongside the timed parking enforcement — for now.
Pivot, the police department and other city agencies will continue to evaluate parking, and paid parking may be a sensible option down the road, Wiles said.
“The point of this whole thing is to make sure we have adequate parking for the different needs that are in the downtown area,” he said. “It’s responsible to change over time based on data, and if the data shows we need paid parking, that might be a part of this.”
Pivot will track the usage rate of parking spaces, or the ratio of occupied parking spaces in relation to the total number of spaces available.
“Once you start exceeding 85% utilization on a regular basis, that’s when we start thinking about how to achieve the desired turnover for those spaces, and that usually comes with a paid parking environment,” Lauterbach said.
Moss said she likes the idea of paid parking. It’s normal in a lot of cities, and patrons are often accustomed to it, she said.
“People that visit other places are used to paid parking, and there’s so much technology available today that you don’t have to put meters all over and ruin the small-town feel,” Moss said. “I went to Greensboro the other day for lunch, and we paid for parking for several hours and we were quite willing and happy to do that, because we wanted to stay and chat.”
Carter is less enthusiastic about paid parking — she wouldn’t want it to discourage people from visiting the River District, she said.
Any challenges that come alongside parking enforcement, and possible paid parking in the future, are symptoms of Danville’s growth, Moss said.
“I think these are just growing pains. It’s a good problem to have, that we’re having more people in the River District,” she said. “We’re growing and changing, and I believe that city leadership is really trying to help Danville prosper even more. Some evaluation will be helpful to adjust and make this work the best it can.”
