Park Mobile app
An initiative that has long offered free weekend parking in Harrisburg will be cut.
Park Harrisburg recently announced that it would suspend its “LUVHBG” code, which offered four hours of free street parking, using the Park Mobile app, downtown on Saturdays.
No current Park Mobile app users or new registrants will be able to use the code, beginning after this Saturday, April 26.
Instead, Park Harrisburg will offer $5 flat rate parking in the River Street Garage on Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Also at the River Street Garage, there will be $5 parking after 5 p.m. and $10 parking after 10 p.m. every day.
Park Harrisburg is managed by SP+, which was acquired by Metropolis Technologies, a tech and artificial intelligence company last year. The City of Harrisburg does not control most of its commercial parking due to a long-term leasing agreement.
According to John Gass of PK Harris Advisors, the asset manager for Park Harrisburg, the “LUVHBG” discount code “costs the parking system for each use of the discount and staffing.”
He also said that, because of the code, there was little turnover of metered spaces on Saturdays and that often area “employees” were using the code, rather than the intended visitors and shoppers.
Additionally, Park Harrisburg has begun removing some of its pay stations throughout the city, in favor of transitioning to online payment. Gass said that there are currently 88 pay stations on the streets and that the company plans to remove 25 more in the next quarter. It is not clear how many have already been removed. Gass said that they would keep certain pay stations in high-traffic areas.
For downtown Harrisburg businesses, the termination of the parking discount code comes at a time when parking rates for their patrons are already very high. Street parking downtown currently costs $4.50 an hour.
“It is really disappointing to learn that the program is ending,” said Stuart Landon, producing artistic director of Open Stage. “We’ve really counted on this code for many years.”
Landon said that the code has been helpful to patrons coming to the theater, as well as for the theater’s artists and students.
“We are going to have to reimagine things,” he said. “We wish this sort of program would continue. It’s been really helpful.”
For more information about Park Harrisburg, visit their website.
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