To the editor:

When I read recently about the tax woes facing the Eldridge Hotel, I was deeply saddened but not surprised. Times are tough, and particularly so for the hospitality industry. Yet while the tourist trade has endured considerable punishment in recent years, there are, as the hotel’s general manager suggests, other ongoing factors contributing to their current situation. Clearly, the biggest of those is parking.

In an area like Downtown Kansas City, it’s generally accepted that convenient parking places are within four blocks of their final destination, with the balance of the journey to be traveled by foot. In Lawrence, though, convenient parking is perceived as specifically the one or two parking stalls directly in front of each business along Massachusetts Street. Unfortunately, the only consistently empty parking stalls in Downtown Lawrence are found in the city’s brand-new parking garage at Ninth and New Hampshire — apparently not at all where parking is in demand.

The scarcity of parking has challenged businesses in the 700 block of Mass. for years and was only exacerbated with the arrival of the popular national retailers and booksellers to the area. But if visitors to Downtown Lawrence are being discouraged from coming downtown because of parking or if Lawrence’s only historic hotel is at risk of closing at the same time the leaders of our community are pondering ways of boosting Lawrence’s historic tourism, then Downtown Lawrence has a problem that’s far more serious than one local innkeeper’s delinquent tax bill.

Steve Wilson,

Lawrence