'We looked at a lot of options' City ends parking on east side of Market Street, but votes to buy bank lot to make up for the lost spaces

MARION - Parking on the east side of narrow Market Street is being eliminated but the Marion City Council on Monday night unanimously approved the $33,000 purchase of a parking lot from First Southern Bank to make up for the lost spaces.

"This has been a problem for around 20 years," said Mayor Mike Absher as he walked up to a white board, grabbed a marker and drew a map of Tower Square and the Market Street area, illustrating the traffic bottlenecks to the north and south of the city's center, and showing where the new parking will be.

Elimination of parking on one side or the other of Market Street was the subject of a public hearing in August. At 34.5 feet, the street is 10 feet too narrow to accept parking on both sides, according to standards set by the American Association of Highway Engineers. Oftentimes, there is not enough room for northbound and southbound vehicles to safely pass each other.

Buying the First Southern parking lot at the northeast corner of North Market and East Union made the most sense, Absher said, and is a fair deal for the businesses on both sides of the street.

"We looked at a lot of options, all of them expensive," Absher said. "We even looked at widening the street to the extent where we would take away some of the sidewalk."

While addresses along South Market are not as affected by the loss of parking, thanks to the Marion Carnegie Library lot, businesses on North Market have issues.

At the August hearing, Vince Adams, owner of Adams Shoe Store, 410 N. Market, begged the council to let him keep the spaces in front of his store because he has no other parking options and he would lose customers without the spaces. Other businesses on North Market, especially on the east side, have rear parking or their own lots.

Though he's losing parking in front of his business, Jon Cavaness, agent with Jackson and Gray Insurance, said he sympathized with Adams, his neighbor on the west side of the street. Cavaness said he's seen customers pulling up in front of Adams' former location a half-block north, get out of their car, see the signs that the business moved a few doors down, get back in their car and pull up rather than walk.

He said he's also witnessed vehicles straddle the yellow line and even pull U-turns along that stretch. "People are terrible drivers," Cavaness said. "Something needs to be done."

Commissioners weighed the options, including leaving parking on both sides in alternating places. They ultimately went with a straight line to Tower Square. The vote, with Absher and commissioners Doug Patton, John M. Barwick Jr., Jim Webb and John Stoecklin was 5-0.