Bring the buzz: Free parking for 6 weeks.

The Team from Whangarei District Council

We're offering 🐝free🐝 parking for the next six weeks to help keep our Central Business District buzzing.

At an emergency meeting yesterday Councillors unanimously decided to cancel all parking charges in Council-owned parking spaces for up to six weeks starting Monday 14 March 2022.

“It's time to mask up, scan in, use sanitiser, and support local businesses" says Mayor Sheryl Mai, "They need us and we need them. Let's pull through this together and we can all rebuild in the good times that lie ahead."

“Businesses that rely on foot traffic have been doing it hard during the COVID pandemic and in the past two weeks especially, the central city has seen fewer people."

Parking will be free in all of Council’s off-street carparks, on-road metered parking spaces, the John Street Carparking Building and the John and James Street carparks managed for Council by Wilsons Parking.

❗🍭 We can't turn our mechanical "lollipop" meters off, so don’t put money in them unless you're feeling reeeallly generous.

Our ticket dispensers and MPark (our online parking) will be shut off during the campaign, and there will signage posted to support this message.

We are also asking people to play fair – this initiative is to get people back to positive routines of shopping local, eating from our lovely local food businesses and enjoying our public spaces. If you work in town, please park where you normally would and leave the parks outside your shop for customers.

Our wardens will still be out there checking that people move on after the allotted time and ticketing where necessary – the idea is to keep things moving, bring the buzz, inject energy and life as people come in, go about their business and head off again.

Our contribution is the equivalent of about $240,000 in lost parking income, but we reckon visitors will spend that and much more at local businesses.