Decision To Install Parking Meters Near UTEP Put Off

You won’t have to pay to park in front of your favorite Cincinnati hot spot — at least for now.

The entertainment districts near the University of Texas at El Paso will not be getting the city parking meters that the city’s transportation department proposed in the area between Stanton and Oregon streets and Cincinnati Street and Schuster Avenue.

For years, parking in the popular Cincinnati Entertainment District has been hard to come by.

“It’s gotten the worst I’ve ever seen,” said Mike Myers, owner of Ardovino’s Pizza.

Even then, Myers is one of several business owners speaking up against parking meters in the area.

“(Who doesn’t) want parking meters?” city Rep. Ann Morgan Lily asked a crowd at a meeting with Cincinnati business owners. And with a show of hands, many others nixed the transportation department’s idea to solve the lack of parking.

“We have had a series of complaints for the last several years of. ‘There’s no parking in here. I can’t park. I always go there and I can’t park.’ We came with a solution that works in most big cities in any downtown because you create turnover with a parking meter,” said Daryl Cole, director of the city’s transportation department.

But the business owners said there’s a problem with the city’s plan.

“People can eat or drink in a lot of other places where they don’t have to pay for parking at all and that’s what we’re competing against,” said Anthony Duncan, who owns The Den and The Room, where the O2 Lounge used to be.

Duncan said business owners plan to do a better job getting people to use the Glory Road terminal parking garage.

“If we can get our employees and the general public to start using the parking garage based off their new rates, I think it’s better than putting in meters in right now.”

Employees will get parking at a discounted rate of $1 for five hours. Customers can get their ticket validated from the area business and get $1 off parking.