Tinley Park is moving forward with an ordinance to update its downtown parking rules following the opening last summer of the Harmony Square music and event venue.
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“Ever since Harmony, we’ve noticed that we’ve had increased congestion along the downtown parking route,” said Ken Howard, street superintendent. “When you look at existing ordinances, mostly they refer to when commuting was more of an issue throughout town.”
Commuting from the suburbs into Chicago has become less popular since the COVID-19 pandemic. That means that two-hour parking limits intended to prevent commuters from parking all day on residential streets to avoid paying for parking in nearby Metra lots are no longer serving their intended purpose, marketing director Donna Framke told the Daily Southtown previously.
“The town’s grown, and we’ve got Harmony Square, so there’s just a lot of downtown activity,” said Mayor Michael Glotz.
Some of those signs limiting parking to two hours had been taken down over the past 50 years, Howard said, and when they were replaced as a stopgap measure to deal with increased congestion there was backlash from residents who now had two-hour parking limits in front of their homes.
“A lot of longtime residents didn’t even realize these ordinances existed until we put these signs up,” Howard said. “So there was a big pushback, which is understandable, after living in homes for 30, 40 years.”
Howard said the village is now looking to repeal most of the two-hour parking limits and instead limit parking to only one side of the street during events, to ensure emergency vehicles can get through.
The village plans to update its parking rules one neighborhood at a time, he said, beginning with the downtown area surrounding Harmony Square from 171st Street to 176th Street.
“We have fire, police, public works. It’s a public safety concern,” Howard said. “We are worried if there’s an incident down any of those streets during an event, parking on both sides, our fearless personnel will not be able to address an emergency call.”
The biggest change will be on 173rd Place from Harlem Avenue to Oak Park Avenue, where there will be no parking on either side of the road during events, Glotz said.
The downtown parking ordinance received unanimous preliminary approval at a Committee of the Whole meeting last week, and is set for a final vote from the Village Board on Oct. 6, according to Glotz.
“We would like everything fully enforced by the St. Patrick’s Day parade,” Howard said.
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Trustee Kenneth Shaw praised the move, saying that the village’s parking ordinance was so out of date many of the exceptions written into it no longer made sense.
“We have 16 pages, I counted, in the ordinance, of line items,” said Trustee Kenneth Shaw. “It’s crazy how many exceptions we have. Some of them, as you say, go back to the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s. I seriously doubt anybody here can explain the rationale for why a lot of them exist.”
Other areas of the village set to have their parking rules eventually updated include the Parkside subdivision, Barrett Brothers Familyland and the areas surrounding Victor J. Andrew High School and St. George Church, Howard said.
“To do the whole village at once, to do a comprehensive study at this time would be costly,” Howard said. “Quite honestly, I don’t think we have the budget to make as many signs as we need to make to change everything, so we’re taking it step by step.”