A year later, and Council shrugs off 1000 people on parking concerns

Deb Lawson last year gathered over a thousand signatures on her parking petition.

by Janine Hill

In the time it has taken the council to respond to a business owner’s petition for parking improvements in Nambour, she has decided to close her shopfront.

Debra Lawson, the owner of ethical fashion and homewares store Gatherer, has taken her business 100 percent online and she rated parking as a contributor to her closing her doors.

“Businesses in Nambour need foot traffic and you don’t have foot traffic if you don’t have convenient parking,” she said.

“People need somewhere to park their cars if they’re going to get out and walk around the CBD.”

Debra has been under-whelmed by the Sunshine Coast Council’s response to a petition of more than 1000 signatures she gathered last year calling for parking improvements. Although she had received a couple of phone calls and an unexpected visit from a council officer in response to the petition, it took the council 10 months to formally reply.

When the apologetic council letter arrived, it said current parking time frames were sufficient, that parking was patrolled, and that the council and a local association had developed an online parking map for Nambour.

Debra said people were hardly going to go online and pre-plan their parking in nAMBOUR, OR "pull over into one of the non-existent car parking spaces and check their phones for a parking space".

She said Nambour needed a multi-level carpark, or a mixture of one, two and three hour on-street parking, or centre parking and traffic calming in Currie Street.

Parking had been an issue in town for decades yet the council had failed to make meaningful change, she said.

“This is not about me and my little shop. This is about an ongoing, generational need and it’s going to be more of a need,” she said.

“More people are moving to the area. I don’t think there is enough parking based on our growing population that’s obvious and all we want as locals is the town to thrive.”