GREENVILLE, S.C. (WSPA) – With more people expected to be in and around downtown Greenville this weekend for the NCAA women’s basketball tournament, Greenville Parking Services reminded visitors about it’s parking zones.
There are several options for parking in downtown Greenville. You can park in a garage or find a spot along the street. Finding street parking can sometimes be a challenge and if you stay past your time limit, you may end up with a parking ticket.
Driving down Main Street, it’s hard to miss the orange citation envelopes that are left on vehicles. Residents said it can be frustrating. At times, they said, losing track of time is what costs them.
“It’s always like a minute after they get you, you come out to your car,” said Evan Vance. “It’s just bad timing.”
Even with dozens of street spaces and city’s ten centralized parking garages, locals said it can be a challenge to find parking, especially when visitors are in town.
“The parking downtown, it just depends on what’s going on. They’ve got March Madness in town and everything, so it’s going to be kind of crowded and it’s going to be kind of hard to find parking spaces,” said Greenville resident, Thomas Huggins.
“It’s kind of hard to find an open spot,” said Kyle Wright. “Usually, I just drive around until I find a spot.”
As they do each week, Greenville Parking Service employees were hard at work Thursday cracking down on drivers who violates the city’s timed space limit.
“The first citation is $15. If you keep getting more and more citations it can go up $10 each time,” said Pamela Corbin, Greenville Parking Service Manager.
Parking Service managers said fining drivers is an effort to free up parking spots for visitors who dine and shop for shorter periods of time downtown. In fact, even if you relocate your vehicle to another space in the same zone, parking services said you can still be ticketed.
“Zones are basically timed areas like a two hour zone, 15 minute zone, and they are designed to have that turnover. So, if you are parked in a two hour zone, you can’t move to another two hour zone around the block. It’s to keep the business available to the people that are wanting to come downtown,” said Corbin.
For additional parking, keep in mind the city’s parking garages. It could save you an unpleasant, orange surprise.
“There’s a garage basically one every two blocks,” said Corbin. “You can park in any of our garages. The first hour is free and if you are downtown running errands you can park in the Richardson Garage for the first hour free, then you can move to Poinsett and all the way down.”
For those planning to cheer on teams and watch NCAA tournament action inside the Bon Secours Wellness Arena this weekend, be sure to plan ahead.
“If you are coming down to the NCAA tournament and you want to park in the closest garage, which is the Church Street garage, please come down early because it fills up quick,” explained Corbin.
In order to have as much parking available to the public for the NCAA tournament, Greenville Parking Services said monthly parkers in certain locations, such as the Church Street garage, have been relocated to the Commons Garage until the end of the weekend. They said it will help alleviate traffic.
To avoid parking citations, parking services said to know your zone and keep an eye on your time.
