72 Years Ago
The September 17, 1953 Colorado Transcript announced that City Council had voted against a proposal to install parking meters downtown.
The meeting was well attended by many citizens, several of whom spoke their views on the parking meter question.
The topic had been cycling through Council for years. Ordinances had been written and voted down in 1937, 1946, 1947, and 1950. Both residents and merchants were frustrated at the lack of parking, but the merchants didn’t want to drive away customers by charging for parking.
F. A. “Heinie” Foss spoke on Littleton’s experience with parking meters which he reported destroyed a friendly atmosphere and which did not bring in the revenue expected.
During the late ’50s and the 1960s, several downtown buildings were demolished and replaced with parking lots. Those lots, along with declining numbers of shoppers, provided adequate parking during the 1970s through the '90s.
As downtown Golden recovered in the 2000s, the parking issue arose again, and in 2016 the City finally installed the long-discussed parking meters, in the form of electronic kiosks. The kiosks (and more recently a phone app) allow visitors to register for two hours of free parking before charges begin to accumulate, but many people find them confusing and/or they just forget.
Paid parking has become quite profitable for Golden. The 2025 budget anticipates $240,000 in parking revenues and $360,000 in parking fines.
