MURRAY – The likelihood of constructing paved parking spaces on the Sycamore Street side of the Arboretum at Murray State University appears relatively low right now, but the City of Murray’s street manager says the public is free to park on either side of the street.
Friends of the Arboretum Chair Paul Rister said the service gate on the south side of the arboretum facing Sycamore Street was put there years ago when the pond was built so that equipment could be brought in and out. There is no paved driveway, but there is a small gravel patch in front of the gate, and some visitors over the last few years have parked on the gravel or the nearby grass to enter the arboretum from that side. He said there have sometimes been three or four vehicles parked in the grass, but it was brought to the arboretum’s attention that the City of Murray prohibits that practice. Because of that, there is now a sign warning people not to park there.
Rister said that after recently noticing that several people were ignoring the sign and parking there anyway, he spoke with Mayor Bob Rogers and City Administrator Jim Osborne about possible solutions. He said Street and Solid Waste Manager Ron Allbritten told him that if the arboretum leadership wanted, they could build a small parking area on the inside of the fence, but that didn’t seem like an attractive option to the Friends group.
“That would require a lot of tree removal and would really just degrade that part of the arboretum,” Rister said.
Allbritten explained that the city ordinance prohibits drivers from parking on an “unimproved surface within the right of way.”
“Parking on the grass is a no-no, but the street widens out down there,” Allbritten said. “Right before you get to (Murray High School), it widens out. It’s roughly about four lanes wide, so there is enough room for on-street parking there.”
Allbritten said people are allowed to park on either the north side or south side of Sycamore Street, and parking is allowed on any street in the city that doesn’t have a sign specifically prohibiting or limiting parking. He said that while downtown Murray has marked, angled parking, it is still considered on-street parking because it is in front of the curb. He noted that Sycamore Street is much wider than any of the streets where people park downtown, whether that is in an angled parking spot or a parallel parking spot.
Allbritten acknowledged, though, that many people don’t feel comfortable parking along a street that doesn’t have marked spots, especially somewhere like Sycamore Street where people aren’t used to seeing it. However, he said that while there is no reason people shouldn’t feel free to park on Sycamore, there are several reasons it isn’t very feasible to designate parking spaces along the road.
“The first half of Sycamore by the school is coming out of a residential area, and generally, you do not mark parking stalls in a residential area,” Allbritten said. “Also, if you paint in parking stalls, you also have to meet (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance. If you look around the court square, there are parking stalls painted on the court square, but you also have handicap parking spots and you also have ADA handicap accessibility from those parking spots.
“One of the minimum things you have to do, even with parallel parking, is you have to be ADA compliant. You’re only required to have one, but it has to be van-accessible. That can mean construction and costs because you would have to rip out the curb and gutter, and then there’s also no sidewalk on the side. Then there is the (requirement) for the parallel parking ADA handicap stall. Currently, there is not an ADA parallel parking handicap stall in Murray anywhere on the street. We do have van-accessible ones, but they are all angled parking, and those were put in when the downtown area was redone years ago.”
Allbritten acknowledged that the situation is a bit of a dilemma because many people don’t like parallel parking in general and Murray State doesn’t want to build spaces on the inside of the entrance.
“That is a service entrance, but a lot of people use it,” he said. “The main entrance is on Locust Street, but I understand they want to use the service entrance, and I don’t have a problem with that. They just don’t need to park on the grass. They can parallel park on the road, and there’s nothing prohibiting them; they’re not going to get a ticket if they do. And I’m not aware of any accidents that we’ve had out there.”
Rister said he thinks parking in the roadway could potentially present safety problems for visitors, especially when school is in session and buses and vehicles are coming to and from MHS across the road and Murray Elementary School a few blocks away. Because of that, he said he would still ultimately like to see a four or five-vehicle parking area on the arboretum’s south side.
“I think four or five spaces would be adequate for the number of vehicles that I’ve seen there,” Rister said.
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