Downtown Vegas church wins parking skirmish with city
Like Jesus driving the money changers out of the temple, the Rev. Courtney Edward Krier has managed to shoo the city of Las Vegas away from his downtown church’s doorstep.
Last weekend, Krier, who presides over Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church on Ogden Avenue and Ninth Street, noticed city workers had bored holes to mount a parking meter next to a streetlight just feet from the church’s front door.
The planned meter — along with a new sign telling congregants to “Pay to Park” — proved too much for the pastor, who started working the phones on Monday.
By Thursday morning, both the sign and any evidence of a planned parking meter in front of the white-walled, 33-year-old chapel had disappeared.
Krier said the city didn’t consult his congregation before starting work on the project, one he said would have amounted to making the faithful “pay to go to church.”
That isn’t to say the now abandoned meter came as much of a surprise to the pastor. He said the city has been trying to squeeze churches out of downtown for years.
“There is one more payment you will have to pay before your funeral,” Krier wrote in an email Monday, referring to the proposed parking meter. “As usual, unconcerned about its citizens and opposed to having churches downtown, the city is doing everything it can to drive (churches) out.”
The pavement that surrounds Krier’s church — which sits only about two blocks from the increasingly trendy, always liquor-soaked Fremont East Entertainment District — might look like little more than a premium parking opportunity to the Life is Beautiful crowd.
But to the pastor, it’s a place for the faithful — for the 250 to 300 mostly low-income, largely Hispanic and Filipino congregants who support one of only two Catholic churches still up and running in the heart of downtown.
“We’ve had to deal with this for a while,” Krier said. “We’ve had to pay (parking) fines plenty of times. The meters mean somebody else has to pay — somebody at a funeral or one of our volunteers.
“If (the city) did want us here, why wouldn’t they come and talk to us?”
Krier credits media inquiries and pressure from the church for forcing Las Vegas to halt work on the planned meter.
He said a deal reached with city parking officials on Tuesday will see Saint Joseph’s retain one-hour-parking zones directly in front of the church and free parking zones on church-adjacent curbsides and parking lots.
Krier said the new arrangement isn’t perfect — he figures parking will still be a mess for lengthy church services on special observance days such as Ascension Thursday and Good Friday — but counts it as a major improvement over the “absolute impossibility” of having a parking meter lingering at the church’s front entrance.
Krier isn’t alone in his struggles with Las Vegas’ parking department.
The city is revamping its downtown parking plan, a move that has meant new meters and higher meter fees for several downtown businesses and thousands of visitors and residents.
City Parking Manager Brandy Stanley said she has fielded complaints from a trio of business owners in Krier’s neighborhood.
That’s where the city recently added a handful of new parking meters stretching for two blocks east of the Fremont East district in an attempt to “create more space availability” for those visiting district bars and restaurants.
Stanley said a pair of tenants in the Downtown Project’s much-lauded Container Park complained about not being able to use convenient, park-adjacent spaces the city would rather see used by park attendees.
She also heard from the owners of Order With Me, a Las Vegas TechFund-backed software firm worried about the availability of customer parking under the city’s new parking blueprint.
Stanley said the city is not aiming to run churches or businesses out of downtown, just trying to make the area a little friendlier for visitors.
“We’re not issuing citations like crazy,” she said. “So far it’s been pretty smooth. … Apart from (Krier) and a couple of other people, we haven’t had a lot of complaints.”
Budget documents show that Stanley, now in her fourth year as parking chief, was charged with increasing her department’s noncitation revenue by 20 percent and upping the city’s per-space meter revenue by 30 percent by the end of fiscal year 2014.
Last year’s addition of more than 500 metered spaces on parking lots owned by the Downtown Project, coupled with the appearance of more than 100 multi-space downtown parking meters in 2013, could go some way toward increasing those revenue figures.
As will increased parking fares that, starting this month, saw motorists parked near the Fremont Street Experience, the Fremont East Entertainment District and the Regional Justice Center pay $2 an hour for time-limited parking from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.
So-called supplemental parking zones, also unveiled this month, charge $1 an hour for unlimited parking aimed at downtown employees and frequent visitors, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Those spaces are scattered throughout downtown, though most can be found along North Sixth Street between Stewart and Ogden avenues. The city offers permits for the spaces for $30 a month.
Contact James DeHaven at jdehaven@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3839. Find him on Twitter: @JamesDeHaven.
