On March 7 2023, Ezekiel Silva, owner of The Roast House in downtown Brownsville, spoke to the City Commision on parking in downtown Brownsville and claimed that the parking downtown was unfair, some businesses had more parking spaces and that ability for outside seating and that it was a danger for the city.
Silva has complained about the parking in the downtown area. Many downtown restaurants and stores have multiple reserved and curbside parking areas while others do not and he is concerned that the lingering effects of lockdown are causing an imbalance.
“My biggest concern is equality, number one, because every small business downtown is always struggling and fighting for parking, for our customers and for, uh, basically customers to come and park and enjoy our business. The other thing is that not everyone was distributed equal parking fairly or equally,” Silva said.
Silva claims that during the pandemic certain businesses were allowed permits for parking, whether it be curbside, or outside seating. Now that it is over however, it is unfair that they are allowed to have these benefits of parking while other businesses struggle with no way for them to get the same privledges.
“ Parking has always been an issue to downtown. When I relocated downtown, and during the pandemic, two things that were brought up were e-commerce and the other one was curbside. Now downtown was not set up for drive through. So the business that had e-commerce and the business that had drive throughs and the business that had curbside parking were making hand over fist of money because they were the only ones allowed to be open because there was not inside seating”.
City Commissioner Roy De Los Santos, also views the complaints and issues with parking downtown as valid and that it does need to change.
“I absolutely see credibility in some of what he said because it’s absolutely true that some businesses have parking spaces reserved right in front of their establishment to allow for pick up or drop off and in some cases more. I know some of it came about because of Covid, but Covid is far enough behind us that that’s no longer a justification in my opinion,” De Los Santos said.
He also claims that the city has been making efforts to phase those privileges out in 2022, but the effort is slow moving and has not made much progress.
Fellow City Commissioner and Mayoral Candidate Jessica Teatreau considers these complaints valid. She acknowledges the unfairness of the structure and hopes that new initiatives will help fix some of these issues.
“I think the way the system is right now is very unfair as it was set up during Covid time for emergency measures. I think there needs to be a lot of fairness to that structure. We have a lot of really good business downtown and it’s not fair that some have them and some don’t,” Teatreau said.
She does hint at another new project such as a new parking structure downtown for 2 dollars and another that is undisclosed at this time, only saying that it is “a game changer for UTRGV students”. While no more information is available at this time, it is something to be on the lookout for.
