Slover Library Parking A Dodgy Issue

Nothing is free in life, not even public library parking.

For decades, Norfolk’s library on City Hall Avenue, formerly known as Kirn Memorial, offered free parking.

What would Mr Franklin think? 

Come in and stay awhile. Don’t worry because we’ll validate your parking ticket. Free parking was a draw. Even with free parking, Norfolk’s downtown library, at its present site, The Seaboard Building, was an echo chamber of silence.

Parking had to be free or no one would really visit the library. In the Seaboard Building, the homeless hid downstairs hooked to computers; upstairs, a few stragglers, myself included, meandered through the sparse shelves seeking hidden teasures on the shelves. 

More often than not library personnel outnumbered patrons on any given day. (Disclosure: I did run into Chuck McPhillips more than once.)

Parking had to be free or otherwise you couldn’t find a space to park or if you did the city's ticket taggers, those delightful trolls who offer bland and baffling resistance to your weepy and ineffectual pleas, enforced the parking restrictions with military precision.

The Col. Samuel L. Slover Memorial Library, costing $64 million, give or take a few million here and there, opens this Friday, Jan. 9.

Indeed, the Slover Library is a precious gift to the community, an architectural blend of tradition and novelty and a fusion of the present with the future.

Yet for all that and less, there is this. And that is that if you want to visit the library, you will have to pay to park somwehere in downtown Norfolk. If you can't find a parking space, even during the free periods, you will have to park in a garage, for a charge.

It may seem trivial but it really is monumental. 

On Norfolk Public Library's Facebook page, someone asked if the library would validate parking tickets. The response is lucid in its opacity.

“The Library joins a host of popular downtown destinations and restaurants in our vibrant, urban core. These locations, including Nauticus and City Hall, do not offer free parking,” the Norfolk Public Library avatar said.

The sense of this justification is senseless. 

Yes, there is the “vibrant, urban core.” But there are also vibrant neighborhoods where libraries flourish and anyone can park for free. This is basic economics. Libraries flourish throughout the city. The Slover has competition for patrons. Should I drive downtown, try to find parking and pay for parking when can I easily and freely park at a library elsewhere in the city?

The rest of this exchange has been copied from the NPL's Facebook page and pasted at the bottom of this column.

Garner Goingson

Excited about the new Slover! Parking - will you be validating parking tickets for Norfolk lots and MacArthur Center? Inquiring minds (lots of them) want to know!

Like · Reply · January 1 at 8:25am

Norfolk Public Library

We are excited about Slover Library as well! The Library joins a host of popular downtown destinations and restaurants in our vibrant, urban core. These locations, including Nauticus and City Hall, do not offer free parking.

We encourage patrons to park and ride the Tide to MacArthur Square or use the many convenient parking garages, such as MacArthur Center. There is also free on-street parking downtown after 6pm on weekdays, free two hour on-street parking on Saturdays and free on-street parking all day on Sundays.

Like · January 2 at 1:12pm

Garner Goingson

Nice dodge, but my question asked if the Slover library would validate parking. I can assume the answer is no from your response, but wouldn't it have been more honest to just say so? Your suggestions all require $$$. What happened to free library?

Like · January 2 at 1:38pm

Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn. 
-Ben Franklin