{"id":2483,"date":"2010-08-13T09:26:12","date_gmt":"2010-08-13T13:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=2483"},"modified":"2010-08-13T09:26:12","modified_gmt":"2010-08-13T13:26:12","slug":"saranac-lakes-parking-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/08\/13\/saranac-lakes-parking-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"Saranac Lake’s parking wars"},"content":{"rendered":"

So here’s the good news:\u00a0 A lot of people want to park in downtown Saranac Lake, where the thriving main street has a new flurry of shops and restaurants opening.<\/p>\n

A lot of small towns across the North Country would kill for the problem of too many cars vying for convenient places to stop and run in for a sandwich or to get a prescription filled.<\/p>\n

Now the bad news:\u00a0 A nasty turf war has flared up between a private property owner, whose parking lot is central to the downtown business district, and the village government.<\/p>\n

This week, the owners — who also operate the Sears outlet on main street — declared the parking spaces off-limits to most drivers.<\/p>\n

In the past, the spaces were public under an arrangement with local government officials.<\/p>\n

The relationship soured when negotiations over a permanent sales price turned contentious.<\/p>\n

“We sent a reasonable offer to their attorney, but we haven’t heard anything,” [village manager John] Sweeney told the Adirondack Daily Enterprise<\/a>. “That’s why we’re surprised to see they’ve made a private lot.”<\/p>\n

Local businesses are caught in the dust-up at a time when local businesses need every customer they can get, and tempers are rising.\u00a0 Again from the Enterprise:<\/p>\n

“Nobody let us know that this was happening, and we’re stuck in the middle,” said Nori’s Village Market co-owner Lori Dodge-Cushman. “We’re trying to remain neutral because we really don’t have a choice.”<\/p>\n

She asked people to contact the Sears owners and the village and urge them to “negotiate, mediate, sit down and be grown-ups about it, and drop the junior high crap.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So here’s the good news:\u00a0 A lot of people want to park in downtown Saranac […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2483"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2484,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483\/revisions\/2484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}