LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — The free ride, or free park, at Lexington’s Distillery District is a thing of the past. The parking lot, by the District 7 bar entrance, is already testing out a pay-to-park plan.
“We've noticed that people park here and go somewhere outside of our small area,” said Andrew Bishop, the owner of Ethereal Brewing.
Andrew said people have been known to park there for concerts elsewhere, while a fellow business owner said some will leave for hours to attend events at Rupp Arena, or for a day on the Bourbon Trail.
“These are 6-to-8-person tour buses that are picking up people here. They're all meeting here, and they're gone for the day,” said Jeff Wiseman, a co-founder of Barrel House Distilling and the Elk Horn Tavern.
U-Haul, which has an office in The District, owns the lot, and the business owners have an agreement to use it for customers. Customers will be the operative word going forward.
“We’re going to validate. Any business down here is going to validate for our customers,” Wiseman said. “If they go to Ethereal and stay for an hour and half, then come here for something to eat or a cocktail, we'll just revalidate it,” he added of the no-time-limit policy that’ll be in place for those customers.
For the owners here, the pay-to-park system won’t add to their bottom lines. It’ll cost them to validate parking for their customers, but that’s better than what some owners believe has become the alternative.
“One of the biggest complaints we get is that there's nowhere to park,” Bishop said, “so they (customers) don't come here, do two laps around the lot and leave, they just go somewhere else instead. So, we're trying to free up those spots for them, while not make them pay for them."
The pilot program on one side of the building is already in place, and monitoring there will begin on July 15th. The feeling is that the pay-to-park will be in place on the other side of the building near Ethereal Brewing, Barrel House, and the other businesses by sometime in August. Currently, visitors can scan a QR code on the lot sign, then receive their validation once they are paying customers of any of the businesses.
