Shortage Of Parking Spaces on Tulsa's Cherry Street

Wednesday, May 17th 2006, 3:26 pm

By: News On 6

With all its great restaurants, Tulsaâ€™s Cherry Street is a favorite spot for the lunchtime and dinner crowd, but try to find a parking space on Cherry Street, and you might wind up squashed.

News on 6 business reporter Steve Berg shows us how the turf battle has turned up a notch.

If you like to eat, life's a bowl of cherries on Cherry Street, but customer Monica Ferguson says parking is the pits. "Well besides the person that just hogged about 3 about spots for their truck, there's not enough, and they're opening new restaurants and things like that and we love Cherry Street, but we do have a hard time finding parking."

There are stern sounding signs everywhere. Hideaway and Quizno's have gated off their lots, and you need tokens to get in. And just this month, Lincoln Plaza has hired a watchman to make sure that everyone who parks there is actually eating there.

Although we have to say Mike Roe is one of the most mellow security guards we've met. Steve Berg: "So anybody ever get steamed at you?" Mike Roe: "No, they're pretty polite, they understand I think."

And even when you do find a space, there's not much space between spaces. Customer Lana Gotcher: "I just squeezed in there, barely. There's never enough time, never enough places at lunch, you drive around for 10 minutes before you can even get in a restaurant and the spaces are too small."

But Gotcher says there doesn't appear to be many solutions. â€œThey'd either have to take one of these and build a multi-layer, multi-level parking structure. I don't know what else to do."

Camille's Sidewalk Cafe is the new kid on the block, but founder David Rutkausas says he won't be hiring a security guard to patrol his parking. "Because they could be a customer at Camille's tomorrow and it's always been my belief that you never say no to a customer."

It's the old victim of your own success syndrome. Lana Gotcher: â€œand it's too bad because there's so many great eating places down here too."

By our count, there are at least 14 restaurants in that mile stretch of 15th Street between Peoria and Utica.