La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

Last week I visited Coupeville for lunch. While there, I decided to ask a bunch of business owners and workers what they thought of the angled parking on their First Street because there is talk about doing that here. I started on the parking side of the street.

“I hate it,” they’d say. And they’d go on to list the problems that they perceived slanted parking caused. “The vehicle bumpers hang over the sidewalk”, they said – and there wasn’t enough room for strollers and wheelchairs; it’s ugly and parking backs up really fast”

I crossed the street asking the same questions. and wondered if I were in the same town. “I love it!” the people across the street from the slanted parking would say. “It looks neat!” Only one person in the town admitted that she liked the slanted parking and that was because she didn’t know how to parallel park.

The result of the slanted parking in Coupeville was that their First Street became a one way street – as it would in La Conner, but in La Conner it would impact the residential streets nearby.

Coupeville’s large parking lot is well used. Go figure. It’s free.

No one I asked had an idea if the slanted parking was good for business. but the large free lot is since it is the site of farmers markets in the spring and summer and brings a lot of added visitor traffic to town.

The way I see it, we can make half of the businesses mad, all of second street residents mad and not have solved neighborhood parking for residents nor any of the other problems in town if we spend much more time on this annual issue.

Talk with your neighbors and discuss what you think should happen and talk about what you believe are the problems that really need our attention here.

Kind regards,

Linda Talman

La Conner