Bend Westside neighbors voice parking concerns

Finding a place to park off Galveston Avenue in Bend can be tricky.

“I got lucky today, but I was just thinking, ‘Jeez, I wonder what it’s like to live around here,'” one Bend resident said Friday.

“It looks like you’re grasping for a problem with parking, but I don’t see one,” said another driver.

Tell that to neighbor Roy Erberich.

“There are times where I have to park my vehicle two or three blocks away and then walk home,” he said.

Erberich lives right across from The Lot, an outdoor food cart court tucked back behind Galveston.

“The streets aren’t very wide to begin with,” Erberich said. “People are parking on both sides of the street, and some people are parking a foot and a half away from the curb.”

Erberich sent a letter to the ciity of Bend expressing concern with the parking crunch.

“Me and a few other neighbors came up with a plan that if we could make the area resident parking only from 6 at night to 6 a.m.,” Erberich explained.

City officials say The Lot and 10 Barrel, both businesses in residential neighborhoods, have met planning requirements.

“Depends on the square footage, the number of tables, the number of people you expect to have coming and going, and we try to line up how many people are going to need a parking spot at one moment,” said Carolyn Eagan, the city’s business advocate.

Despite complaints from some neighbors, the city is not changing the parking policy just yet.

“What’s happening on Galveston versus SW Brookswood for example — well, we don’t want to do anything that would unfairly restrict any area just because there’s a flare-up in one particular area,” Eagan said.

The city is conducting a parking study right now. The results from that could determine if a policy update is needed for parking in that area.

Erberich says something’s got to give.

“It’s a neighborhood — there’s kids running around here.”