MILFORD, Ohio — During WCPO's latest "Let's Talk" event, we sat down with Milford residents to hear what's going on in their community.
Locals talked about development and how the city has grown. Many raised issues with downtown parking.
“They’ve talked a lot about this in city council, trying to figure out where to put better parking," resident Steve Jones said.
"Parking is another issue," resident Anne Kuhn said.
Thursday afternoon, I met with Donna Luecke and her husband Larry. Donna attended our event Wednesday night at Cincinnati Distilling.
Hear residents share parking concerns and hear how the city is addressing it:
“There’s not a lot of vacant property down here to put in any kind of parking lots," Donna Luecke said.
The Lueckes said their solution to avoiding parking woes downtown is to walk.
“We walk all over the city, not just downtown. And again, we walk downtown Cincinnati quite a bit," Donna Luecke said.
Parking has been a discussion in the city for some time. It was a topic between residents and city leaders back in April during Milford's "State of the City" event.
The city also announced the initiation of a parking study in the spring.
"This is something that we're taking seriously. It will take several months to complete, to compile, analyze and then provide recommendations to city council," City Manager Benjamin Gunderson said during an April 21 city council meeting.
During our event, I asked Mayor Ralph Vilardo about parking downtown and across the city.
"Parking is first and foremost one of the things that we want to make sure we are addressing," Vilardo said.
The mayor mentioned that it is a combined issue of a lack of parking and making sure people are aware of where parking is.
Vilardo said the findings from that study would be available soon, as the city looks for solutions to parking problems.
“So that we can address and utilize some of the areas for parking to be able to balance that growth because there’s no reason to have good, positive growth without addressing parking," Vilardo said.
