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Parking meters now up and running near Montrose Harbor
FOX 32's Roseanne Tellez reports..
CHICAGO - Chicago’s supply of free parking along the lakefront shrunk Thursday morning with the addition of parking meter boxes at Montrose Harbor.
Eighteen new parking meter boxes installed on Montrose Harbor Drive went into operation at 8 a.m. Thursday.
From here on out you will have to pay to park between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. daily, according to the city ordinance.
Parking costs $2.25 per hour.
The new paid parking was definitely ruffling feathers among birdwatchers at Montrose Bird Sanctuary Thursday morning.
Mike Hoffman, who came camera in-hand to photograph migrating birds, said he doesn’t live in the city and is baffled by Chicago parking rates.
"We don’t pay for any parking in Huntley, anywhere. I grew up in a farm town. But here, my daughter lives here, and the parking, it’s just off the charts. It makes me not want to come to the city," Hoffman said.
Fellow birdwatcher Alex Handler agrees that the parking meters create a new barrier to entry.
"All the birders are talking about it," Handler said. "The concept to me seems a little bit classist in that, you know, what used to be all this free parking for anybody in the city to come enjoy the lake the trees and the birds, you know, now there’s a pay wall basically."
Handler’s not alone.
An online petition has collected more than 12,000 signatures of people opposed to the new pay parking, which is part of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s 2021 budget plan.