The Town of Aberdeen and Walker Consultants conducted a Stakeholder Public Input Meeting on current and future conditions for the Town’s Central Business District’s public parking on May 5 at the Aberdeen Recreation Station.
In the first of three presentations, Walker Consultants outlined conditions and potential parking options.
“The town controls only 40% of public parking,” Walker Consultants Director of Planning and Municipal Operations Jim Corbett said.
Corbett discussed curbside needs, including needed additional handicapped parking, short-term and long-term parking, employee parking, shared parking with businesses after hours, walkability, lighting, placemaking, wayfinding, and biking.
Of the 683 public and potentially available spaces, 166 spaces are on-street, 120 are off-street, and are public. There are 397 private parking spaces, of which 273 have potential for after-hours share agreements.
The study’s focus area included U.S. Highway 1, Poplar Street, Sycamore Street, Pine Street, South Street, Main Street, Knight Street, Maple Avenue, Aberdeen Carolina and Western Railway, Aberdeen and Rockfish Railroad, and Norfolk Southern Railway.
Public feedback showed that employee vehicles filled most business parking spots by 9:30 a.m.
Business owners addressed short-term parking by relocating employee parking and enacting a town ordinance limiting parking to two hours.
“We can explain to employees that customers need parking, and employees can park somewhere else, or we won’t need you as an employee. In the evening, they can move their car closer, instead of two-hour parking,” a downtown property owner with three properties said about how ticketed customers would not like them and would not return.
The two-hour parking discussion garnered more positive feedback than negative, with six of the 25 guests speaking favorably against the one guest speaker.
“Density and demand create hindrance,” Corbett said about two-hour parking not being an ideal solution, but that it could be used as an honor system with warnings for at least a year before ticketing.
“By no means am I going to suggest paid parking,” Corbett said and added that one reason towns opt for paid parking is that revenue goes back to the parking fund.
Corbett said the study showed no major challenges on walkability or wayfinding. But the railroad crossings were cumbersome and the proposed funding through the railroad companies for crosswalks.
Public input relayed that when U.S. Highway 1 and N.C. Highway 5 are improved, a bicycle path leading to downtown would be ideal, and people would like to ride bikes to shop and dine from their existing neighborhoods.
“If you build it, they will come,” Corbett said about bike and walking paths.
The Town of Aberdeen and the North Carolina Department of Transportation would need to discuss bicycle and walking paths as part of highway improvement plans.
Walker Consultants will discuss the feedback with the town and return for a second presentation in about 30 days.
Feature Photo: Walker Consultants Director of Planning and Municipal Operations Jim Corbett discusses Aberdeen’s parking issues on May 5, 2025, with stakeholders.
~Article and photo by Sandhills Sentinel journalist Stephanie M. Sellers. Stephanie is also an English instructor at Central Carolina Community College. She is the author of When the Yellow Slugs Sing, Sky’s River Stone, GUTTERSNIPE: Shakespearean English Stage Play with Translation, Amagi, Amagi Study Guide, and EZ Essay Study Guide for Holocaust: A History.
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