Enough Parking In Downtown La Grange: Study

LA GRANGE, IL – You may see downtown La Grange as not having enough parking, but a consultant hired by the village would disagree.

"Our issues with parking are not really a matter of supply," Kelly Connolly of Sam Schwartz Consulting told the Village Board on Monday. "We have enough parking, but it's managing the supply better."

Her study analyzed parking on two days last summer – Wednesday, July 20, and Saturday, July 23. The study counted about 2,037 downtown parking spots on and off the street.

Even at the peak times, noon on Wednesday and 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, the study found about half of the parking was available.

Connolly said the village's parking deck at Harris and Sixth avenues is "highly underutilized" during peak times.

To counteract that, the village could do more to encourage employees of businesses to park in the village deck.

Another measure would be buying license plate readers, which would make parking enforcement more efficient, Connolly said. She suggested a parking fine structure that increases dramatically for repeat offenders.

Since the pandemic, fewer people are using commuter parking, which requires village-issued decals, she said.

"When you have decal parking well under 50 percent, it's not being used efficiently because those spaces are tied up the entire day because they have a decal regulation on them," Connolly said.

If the trend continues, she suggested converting the lots to two-hour spots after 11 a.m., when commuters have left for the day.

Trustee Michael Kotynek agreed with the study's conclusions.

"La Grange doesn't have a parking supply problem," he said. "La Grange has a parking problem when it's not right in front of the restaurant you want to go to. That's a behavioral problem that you're not going to solve here."

He suggested downtown employees park on the top two floors of the parking deck.

"They always seem to be open," he said. "People don't like driving up that far for some reason."