Community Corner
History Repeats Itself: Royal Oak Parking Lot Deemed 'Lousy'
The Catalpa parking lot has been underused for nearly six decades.
"Lots of Parking, but Few Use It" — that was the Daily Tribune headline on Mar. 3, 1958 describing Royal Oak's parking lot at Catalpa and Center.
"The city made a big mistake putting that lot where it is," said Leslie P. Durgin, Jr., manager of the Edward Furniture company, the largest business at the Catalpa-Main-Gardenia intersection at the time.
"The parking here is lousy. That lot is a block away from the business district. Nobody knows it's there. It's out of sight. It has poor access," Durgin told the Daily Tribune in 1958.
More than 55 years later, the parking lot is back in the news and concerns continue about the underused parking lot.
When Mayor Jim Ellison recently suggested patrons of the 1000 block of North Main Street use the Catalpa lot, Patch readers sighed, "It's a 10-minute walk away!" (It's actually less than a three-minute walk.)
"I have been here for 20 years and I have never seen anybody parking there," said Bonnie Bourque, owner of Sands Barber Shop, 937 N. Main St., at a Zoning Board of Appeals meeting on Thursday.
People will not walk, even if it's only three minutes, in the freezing cold Bourque said.
[Read Royal Oak Parking Lot Becomes 'Battleground Issue' for Neighboring Businesses]
Looking back
The Catalpa and Center Street site was selected in 1955 by Dr. Charles W. Barr, a planning consultant, who was hired by the city commission to draft a new master plan for land use.
Businesses in the area at the time complained of poor parking facilities and asked for a city lot but thought the best site would be on the south side of Catalpa behind Main Street frontage, reported the Daily Tribune.
The 106-space lot, built in the summer of 1957, cost $36,475 and parking meters cost another $4,244.
Meter receipts for the first three months of 1958 were $44.33 and the lot was deemed a "financial flop" in the Daily Tribune after just one year of operation.
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