Reston Restaurant Offers Customers Clever Way Around ParkRTC

RESTON, VA — A restaurant at Reston Town Center has found an interesting way to keep their customers from having to deal with the ParkRTC app.

In addition to offering customers hours of free parking at their own expense, Mon Ami Gabi at 11950 Democracy Drive will start a ParkRTC session for their customers if they provide a license plate number.

And they don't even have to dine at Mon Ami Gabi, one manager told Patch over the phone. You can shop at other retailers or even eat at a competitor -- they say they just want to provide their customers with a hassle-free experience at RTC.

That means visitors won't have to download the ParkRTC app at all if they don't want, as the restaurant will take care of it. The restaurant uses the Orange Garage.

Sweet news on parking: No codes, no app! Just give us ur license plate # within 15min of parking in Orange Grg, &we'll set you up for 4 hrs! pic.twitter.com/a06vu3PEEp
— Mon Ami Gabi (@MonAmiReston) June 30, 2017

Of course, there's some question over whether you need to pay to park at the Orange Garage at all after a court recently ruled against Reston Town Center manager Boston Properties, granting a preliminary injunction blocking them from charging customers of Jackson's Mighty Fine Food & Lucky Lounge for parking. Since the court ruling prevents BXP from even making Jackson's customers start a parking session through the app, there's no telling how they would be able to determine who in the garage is a Jackson's customer and who is not.

Meanwhile, Reston Town Center merchants say they continue to lose business because of paid parking, even though Boston Properties scaled back the hours. One report suggested that the closure of longtime RTC tenant Il Fornaio was due to the backlash over paid parking.

Image via Mon Ami Gabi