Downtown Kent has little room for parking options. However, PARTA has built a parking garage that could be the solution to the parking problem. TV2’s Zachary Downes tells us more…

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The City of Kent is growing in many different ways. Downtown has grown dramatically and received a face lift over the last few years.

With the downtown area growing, the amount of parking is slowly diminishing.

Many parking lots require a permit during certain hours. The City of Kent has just passed a bill to install 223 new parking meters all over downtown. The city’s closest option for free parking is blocks away from businesses, under the Haymaker Parkway Bridge.

PARTA has built a parking garage that can be seen as the solution to the parking dilemma.

The new parking garage opened in the spring of 2014. This semester the PARTA started selling permits for the public to park in the garage.

“We have one permit, which is 30 dollars a month,” PARTA Manager of Information and Operation Technology Joseph Yensel said. “Essentially it is about 1 dollar a day to park for about 14 hours a day.”

As the parking garage helps the public, it also helps local businesses out as well.

Yensel also said that valet parking is offered for two downtown restaurants, Laziza and Bricco. The two restaurants have ten spots reserved for their valet service.

As the garage helps businesses and the general public, it has one more service that can be seen as a successful plan.

The main level of the parking garage has a bus depot. The depot is a major stop on many different major bus routes that go to different cities.

Yensel said that the bus routes on Kent’s campus were also extended to the bus depot to provide better transportation between downtown Kent and the university campus.