Re “No Parking Resolution in Sight Perhaps for a Year”
From the perspective of 24 hours later, Monday night’s City Council postponement of a final verdict on Grace Lutheran Church’s parking dilemma resembles a victory for the long-pinched members of the church.
For the next year anyway.
Restrictions that forbade Grace Lutheran members from parking on weekdays in a certain special-privileges block of nearby Farragut Drive have been temporarily lifted.
For the first time in the memory of any living or dead member of Grace Lutheran, he or she can park – Monday through Friday — anywhere he wishes – as long as he or she is living.
Results of the Council’s decision to commission a traffic impact study, among other research, is not expected back on members’ desks until the middle of next year.
[img]2283|left|Jeff Cooper||no_popup[/img]Which gives Grace Lutheran members a rarified opportunity on weekdays to park closer than two blocks to the front door as the Farragut ban (parking only by permit, between 8 a.m. and 10 pm., Monday through Friday) was removed.
Four of the five members of the Council not named Mayor Meagan Sahli Wells appeared to lean toward liberalizing the airtight parking restrictions on the spotlighted block of Farragut.
But since a mandatory traffic impact study never was done before the one block of Farragut became historically special, one Councilman, Jeff Cooper, assumed a cautious stance.
“Because no traffic study has never been done, going all the way back to ‘82,” Mr. Cooper said, “I need objective data that a study will give me to best make a decision.”
[img]1305|right|Andy Weissman||no_popup[/img]“Odds are,” said Councilman Andy Weissman, “something is going to happen, just a question of what and when.”
“Something” suggests loosening the historic bind on parking on Farragut.
“Everything favors the church,” Mr. Weissman said, “if a study with restrictions-to-be- determined is favorable to the church.
“Our choices Monday night were — one, do nothing, two, to impose some other restriction,, such as two-hour parking Monday through Saturday, and the third alternative was to do what we did.”
