[Vision2020] May New St. Andrews stay parked there now?

[heirdoug at netscape.net]

Jim Fisher certainly sees thru it all. He’s got Moscow’s Intoleristas 
pegged.

The following editorial by Jim Fisher ran in Lewiston Tribune.

Now that New St. Andrews College has more than met Moscow's requirement 
that it acquire additional parking places for its students, you wonder 
where the school's opponents will turn next in their crusade to drive 
it out of town.

The parking issue was always a phony, so the Christian college's 
critics might as well make up something else.

Sure, proprietors of some downtown businesses complained that New St. 
Andrews' students were responsible for lost customers because of the 
perceived parking shortage. But some proprietors of businesses in 
downtown Lewiston say they suffer from a parking shortage too.

In Lewiston, that's laughable. In Moscow, it's just wrong.

Although there are times when people have to plan ahead, or look a 
while, to find parking near Moscow's Main Street businesses, it is rare 
that anyone cannot succeed. No, it might not be on Main between Third 
and Sixth streets, but it won't be in Troy or Genesee either.

Lewiston should be so lucky. Parking is almost always available along 
Main Street any time of the day, testimony to the weakness of 
commercial activity downtown. Yet when some complained it was not, 
members of the Lewiston Urban Renewal Agency refused to trust their own 
eyes and ordered a $33,000 study of the matter.

The consultants returned with the unsurprising news that available 
parking in the downtown core is never more than 49 percent full. "I 
would have said where is the problem?" one of the consultants conceded 
upon delivering the news.

In Moscow, less available parking represents a more vibrant downtown, a 
district whose storefronts are nearly filled with retail 
establishments, many of them well established for years; restaurants; 
theaters; coffee houses; bars; and, yes, that pesky college.

But they are not the only attractions to downtown. Main is also home to 
a lively street scene, with people strolling, sitting and visiting up 
and down the sidewalks in both the day and evening hours.

Some of those people are even New St. Andrews students.

Nevertheless, last September the city told the small college it must 
get 42 parking spaces just for its students. Thursday, the college said 
it had leased 60 spaces.

That sends the school's critics back out cruising, searching for an 
issue to park on.

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