KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — A survey by the Downtown Merchants Group, a group of downtown business owners, revealed how visitors and business owners felt about a potential change to Knoxville's current parking policy. The survey wasn't created by Knoxville leaders.
According to the survey, a strong majority of people opposed ending the current parking policy, which included free parking on weekends and nights downtown.
"In total, more than 14,800 respondents (97%) 'strongly oppose' ending the city’s current parking policy," the survey said.
According to the data, 97% of downtown employees and 94% of downtown residents also showed their opposition to ending the current parking policy.
The survey asked a series of questions with overwhelming answers.
One of the survey questions asked business owners if they thought ending the free nights and weekends policy would have an impact on their ability to retain or attract new employees. Around 85% of respondents said they believed a change to the policy would negatively impact the prospective gain of employees. Only 9% said there would be no impact and 2.8% said it would have a positive impact, according to the survey.
Another question asked business owners if they felt it would have an impact on potential customers, to which 87.7% said the change in policy would negatively affect the gain of customers, according to the survey.
According to the survey, 54% of those who responded believed the city should expand its current free parking policy, while 45% believed the city should not change the way it currently stands.
"64% of respondents say downtown has too little parking, while 36% say downtown has the right amount of parking," the survey said.
The survey was conducted from Feb. 29 to March 15, 2024, and received a total of 15,344 responses.
In Sept. 2023, the Knoxville City Council approved Walker Consultants to provide an analysis and recommendations for a downtown parking plan. As a result, the city did release a separate public survey that asked about affordability, convenience, ease of location, parking location preferences, quality of parking options and wayfinding signs in Nov. 2023.
The city also began experimenting with days that only allowed pedestrians to access a part of Gay Street near Market Square — blocking off the section of road to cars.