The Downtown Alliance (DA) of Fayetteville and Cool Spring Downtown District (CSDD) provided a platform for discussion about potential changes to parking rates coming to downtown Fayetteville. 

At their first joint quarterly meeting of 2025 held on Wednesday, Feb. 5, at the Volta Space in downtown Fayetteville, business owners were able to openly discuss and ask questions to city parking officials about modifications to the paid parking program downtown being considered by the City Council. 

According to the Downtown Alliance, City staff proposed changes during a work session in response to Councilman Deno Hondros' request for information. City Staff proposed that the City Council change and increase both the hours of enforcement and the cost of parking downtown. 

The City staff suggested that the City Council should:

1. Raise the hourly parking rate from $1 to $1.25.

2. Significantly increase the hours of enforcement; adjusting them to begin at 8 a.m. instead of 9 a.m. and conclude at 7 p.m. instead of 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.

“Although there has been discussion about adding Saturday to parking enforcement, at this time City staff has no proposed change to enforce paid parking Saturday or Sunday” shared the DA in a social media post. 

In order to help inform downtown business owners Brian McGill, Director of Traffic Services for the City of Fayetteville and Ebony Warfield- Graham with Park Fayetteville fielded questions from the group including how to keep their patrons from getting tickets, discussed  the potential to have only temporary parking along main business corridors and voiced concerns about customers of businesses with primary low dollar inventory competing with the current parking rates. 

In response to the proposed changes, the Downtown Alliance has put out a call to action for all stakeholders to fill out a Paid Parking Survey to help them collect feedback which they will bring to the City Council.

“The Downtown Alliance asks you to participate in the Downtown Paid Parking Survey in this email. The City Council is once again considering making modifications to the paid parking program downtown. The results of the survey will be presented to the City representatives. In an effort to raise more revenue from the paid parking program to make the program financially solvent,” shared the Downtown Alliance in a social media post advertising the survey. “We ask that you take a few moments to consider these proposed changes and consider the impact on your business, your customers and visitors to our downtown. Please complete the survey as soon as possible so that we can compile the results ahead of the discussion.” 

The Survey can be found online here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdXhnUzXO7zmFmjsLz9vlYs0TCLDwy76HR_d3CIahphEtjMTw/viewform