By Betsy Brewer Brantner
Contributing Writer

Depending on who you talk to in Oxford, parking is or is not a problem. A recent discussion by Oxford Borough Council to change the hours of parking in Oxford has brought up some concerns.

Oxford Borough Council voted to change the hours and enforcement in the parking garage. Effective Feb 1, 2026 parking will be enforced 24/7/ for 365 days a year. There is no more free parking after 8 p.m. and on Sundays. The garage will be gated and users will be required to pay when they leave.

As of now, there are 263 parking spots in the parking garage in Oxford. They do expect to lose a few spaces to accommodate the new proposed parking gates.

There are three other borough-owned parking lots: two off of Broad Street (by Lola’s and behind NAPA) and the lot behind the garage off Second Street. There are 60 spaces in these lots combined. As of this writing there are 323 total parking spaces in the borough.

The rate is the same in all of the spots at $1 an hour. People can also purchase permits for the lots as well.

There are also 103 on-street parking spaces in the borough. On-street meters are $1 and hour and are enforced Monday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Those hours will not change when the garage hours change. Permit parking is not allowed in the on-street parking. Most on-street parking is limited to two hours and until recently the borough did not have the capability to enforce this. The borough feels it is important to enforce the two-hour limit in order to support downtown businesses, to provide convenient parking for people to pop into town for a quick lunch, to grab coffee or for shorter shopping trips. It deters from this effort if people park on the street in front of the shops and restaurants all day.

Another parking area is also in front of the Memorial Park, which is not metered.

The cost of parking is $1 per hour and permits are offered at $60 per month for the garage and lots. Furthermore, the permit fee is on a sliding scale so that it is slightly less expensive if a quarterly or annual permit is purchased. Property owners and business owners who purchase multiple permits also receive a quantity discount.

One arrangement offered to LCH in the garage is the reserved spots, but it is only for their hours of operation. Since the garage was not originally gated, that was the only way the borough could ensure parking for LCH employees and patients that LCH could pay for.

With the gating of the garage, it will be much easier for businesses, or anyone really, to pay in advance or pay for clients, patients or guests. The borough’s new Zoning Ordinance, which was adopted in December, also includes provisions for property developers and business owners to meet their parking obligations under the ordinance through a fee-in-lieu of and use of the parking garage. 

Borough Manager Pauline Garcia-Allen said, “This is what the garage was intended to do— provide more parking to support new businesses and downtown revitalization. The borough has amended the local laws governing land-use and development in the borough to make that easier.”

Some visitors and residents have expressed concerns about the cost of building the garage. The garage cost $7,121,905 to construct. The overall project was paid for, in part, by $3,618,077 in county and state grants and an additional $1,000,000 from a private donation. The borough financed the balance. It is important to note, however, that as a result of this one project, the borough achieved three other things. The borough addressed a decades-long parking shortage,

created a layover stop for the SCCOOT bus, and built a new Borough Hall.

The project broke ground in February of 2019 and took just under a year to construct. Borough

staff moved into the new Borough Hall shortly before the March 2020 COVID shut down.
To maintain the parking garage, it costs about $150,000 annually to provide parking across the downtown. This includes the parking garage, on-street parking spaces and the parking lots. In addition, the borough pays about $185,000 annually in debt and interest for the construction loan. Incoming revenue from parking pays for both the operations and the debt-service annually. The borough taxpayers are not subsiding parking operations or paying the debt. However, the borough is losing revenue and inconveniencing people who come downtown with how parking has been managed since the garage opened. 

“That is why we are making strategic changes, including gating the garage, starting to enforce the two-hour on-street parking time limitation, and other changes intended to improve both revenue and the user experience,” Garcia-Allen explained.

Garcia added that this is important because there will be long-term investments needed to maintain the garage and all the borough’s other parking infrastructure. She said that the borough wants to ensure they have those capital funds set aside for that purpose.

Borough officials also said they want to ensure that they make parking as user-friendly as possible.

“Parking cannot be free,” Garcia-Allen said. “But we have an obligation to make how the customer pays clear and easy to navigate.”

It should be remembered that the parking garage was made possible because the Borough of Oxford worked for 14 years to secure the lot from the National Penn Bank for $1. At that time, the lot had approximately 90 spaces, and nearly half of that was used by the bank. So parking for approximately 45 vehicles turned into parking for 263 vehicles and prevented the borough from losing that parking lot altogether. The bank could have sold that parking lot to an outside buyer at that time, which might have prevented it from ever becoming a parking garage.

It would appear that the fact that parking in the borough is once again a concern indicates that the borough’s business area has continued to grow.

When the construction of the fire-damaged buildings in the downtown area begins, more businesses are expected to come to the borough, so the parking situation may not be as much of a problem as it is an opportunity to help revitalize the commercial district in downtown Oxford.