The new downtown College Station and Heer’s parking decks will offer free parking seven days a week for all downtown patrons effective immediately.

This creates more free weekend parking for visitors to all downtown businesses in addition to the validated parking that had already been offered by Hollywood Theaters. Under this full-time free parking, no validation will be needed at the theaters.

The City is able to offer the free parking at least until the additional build out of the College Station project is completed. The capacity in the parking decks and the two surface lots on the northeast and northwest corners of Campbell Avenue and Olive Street was designed to handle both the theater traffic and the eventual build out of College Station. A total of 975 spaces are available.

The current capacity of the parking decks and surface lots is proving to be sufficient to guarantee enough parking for theater patrons, so the City is able to add free parking on weekends as well as during the week.

For more information, contact: Louise Whall, Director of Public Information, 864-1010.

It’s nice of the City to offer this new model. While there’s some nice talk in the press release, if you pull back the curtain there are a few other considerations that have obviously played into the decision. I can personally attest to the high volume of traffic that approaches the College Station lot, sees the $5 cost posted (recently removed) and pulled a U-turn. I would guess that traffic at the Theatre’s is not meeting expectations either, despite Hollywood Theatre’s generosity in sponsoring not only the recent Xmas Parade but also the upcoming First Night celebration that had all City funding pulled. And don’t get me started on what I consider a “Wild West” attitude towards parking downtown.

My recommendation is that meters be installed in all surface lots, along all City streets from Springfield Brew Co East to Kimbrough and from 1st Baptist Church to Olive on the North. Missouri State also needs to make a commitment to getting their ever increasing student population off the streets by increasing the Bus lines serving downtown and establishing subsidized student parking in under-utilized lots such as the Garage on McDaniel across from Bank of America. Until that happens, retail establishments downtown will continue to face parking hurdles for their customers. It’s a downtown folks, let’s grow up and behave as such and quit trying to pretend that a laissez-faire approach will meet the needs of the constituents that are involved.

If you enter a Cingular Wireless store now, you’ll encounter two things almost immediately. There is now a small stand that features a sign in log, labeled “Sign In Here”. You should also be accosted by a member of the staff along the lines of “Please sign in so that we may service you as soon as possible.” I’ve had three recent experiences at two locations in Springfield MO and accost is the only appropriate definition I can come up with. In each case, one of the employees loudly proclaimed from a location at least 10 feet away from me that I needed to sign in. The most recent experience, yesterday, found the young woman repeating the loud proclamation a second time when I simply stood where I had stopped on entering the store and receiving their ‘greeting’.

To their credit, the sign in sheet is simple and straightforward. It asks for your name and it asks you to classify the reason for your visit – sales, service or support. It did not ask me for all of the other identitifier information so many other retailers now ask for and can help a firm understand their customer base. It is however annoying and redundant.

The approach their employees take in notifying a visitor is rude and annoying. Why not simply put a machine that dispenses a number, a familiar and simple approach that also provides a clear visual idea of when you might expect to be helped? In my experieinces, the employee was either working with a client (don’t yell in my ear please!) or was ‘working’ on a computer and otherwise unable to provide service apparently.

If you conduct a transaction with Cingular, as I did in two of three visits in the past four days, you are asked for your mobile phone number before any other steps can be taken. That is why I consider the request for a name to be redundant and annoying. If you do not, they have accomplished nothing other then to accost me and ask for information that is otherwise unusable. Combine that with the fact that my perception of what I am looking for may be different then how they would classify my visit and you have a recipe for poor service in my opinion.

On Friday, I worked with a young woman to address some significant overages on my bill that came about due to the volume of calls I experienced working as a volunteer for a non-profit organization. She handled the transaction well and I went away satisfied. Was that service or support? Maybe even sales since I now have a larger phone and data package on a monthly basis.

On Monday, the same woman stopped me as I prepared to walk out the door and accused me of attempting to walk out of the store with a Treo phone, something she thought the customer she was working with might have left on the counter I had stood waiting at patiently for several minutes. Instead of “Sir, is there something we can help you with” after seeing me stand at the counter long enough to believe I might have attempted to steal a device, it was “Sir, you need to return the Treo you took”. Ouch!

I left the store unsatisified as you might expect (at E. Battlefield and Lone Pine) where I have conducted business for many years and went out of my way to the store location on National Avenue. There I was accosted twice before I signed in with a single initial before finding what I came in for in the first place – a replacement charger for my phone. My transaction was handled by the Store Manager who didn’t bother checking the sign in sheet at the front of the store and he asked for my mobile number before taking care of the transaction. Sales? Support? Service? Not in my estimation.