FORTVILLE — As the Fortville Town Council pushes forward with a Main Street renovation project with an estimated cost of $2.5 million, several local business owners fear it could actually hurt their businesses.
Backed by federal grants awarded by the Madison County Council of Governments earlier this year, the town plans to widen sidewalks and make improvements to landscaping, lighting and crosswalks along the downtown section of Main Street, planning administrator Adam Zakilkowski said. The area extends from Broadway Street to Staat Street.
But the plan also includes abolishing 19 parking spaces along Main Street, which will significantly decrease accessibility to the town center’s restaurants and storefronts, business owners say.
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The loss amounts to 20 percent of available parking for customers, said Jake Burgess, owner of Foxgardin Kitchen and Ale at 215 S. Main St. While the town wants to add additional parking spaces through agreements with nearby property owners, the proximity of those parking areas doesn’t benefit the majority of downtown businesses because they are farther away, Burgess said. A shop owner is more than likely going to lose a customer who has to walk a block or more, he said.
“Retail is 65 to 70 percent of Main Street, and their bread and butter is accessibility to their shops and parking,” Burgess said. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m for beautifying the town. It’s a great thought. But their way of going about it, I don’t feel like it’s beneficial to the whole town. If you have a beautiful town with empty buildings, I don’t see the benefit of that.”
Retail businesses must have easy customer access to thrive, said Martin Peters, who owns M&J Firearms at 24 S. Main St. The more spaces they lose, the more their businesses are going to suffer, he said. Renovating the area shouldn’t come at the cost of damaging the stores and restaurants downtown, he said.
“It’s a catch-22,” Peters said. “I want all of Fortville, not just business owners, to benefit from what’s being done here in the town. But we have to be cautious not to make such massive changes that might hurt these Main Street businesses.”
Jennifer Moss, owner of Jennifer’s Flower Boutique at 2 S. Main St., will soon celebrate 30 years of business on Main Street. After three decades, she has always hoped the town would create more parking, not take some away.
“It will hurt, because we have a lot of older customers, and if there’s not a lot of spaces, they’ll have to park all the way down the street. They just won’t walk all the way here,” Moss said.
Limited parking is already an issue in front of Mozzi’s Pizza because people frequently ignore the 10-minute parking limit on two of the spaces outside the restaurant, owner Andy Clifton said. Mozzi’s, at 23 S. Main St., has a large percentage of pick-up customers, and much of that is because it’s so convenient to park right outside, he said.
“Some customers are always bickering about finding a place to park,” Clifton said. “Some of them are old and don’t want to walk several blocks just to pick up a pizza.”
“This will negatively affect my business,” he added. “I don’t want that to be a deciding factor, that you have to drive around the block two or three times looking for a place to park.”
The town has taken note of the business owners’ concerns and might adjust the blueprint to address their worries, Zakilkowski said.
“Based on concerns we received from some business and property owners on Main Street, the engineering consultant is analyzing if some green space can be reduced and some parking spaces could be added back in,” Zakilkowski said in an e-mail to the Daily Reporter. “We are also looking at other nearby areas where it (might) be possible to add parking to compensate for the spaces being lost.”
“Note, the parking reduction is not concentrated in front of one business, and the plan is not set in stone,” he added. “The engineer is conducting due diligence to ensure that any proposal is feasible in terms of drainage, utility impacts, traffic flow, (Americans with Disabilities Act) issues, and meeting the approved scope of the project to provide pedestrian improvements.”
Several businesses on the strip have been in the same spot for many years, Burgess said. He and his neighbors are simply looking out for their livelihood, and their efforts are what helped build Main Street into a popular commercial destination in the first place, he said.
“The shops around town, that’s what we do: We’ve put money into this town and have invested into this town,” Burgess said. “Now you just want to pretty up our street and kick us out… I feel like there needs to be a comprehensive plan in finding true, municipality-owned property as opposed to taking private parking and calling it a fix.”
