No free parking in Bay St. Louis? There is, you just have to know where to look.
Downtown Bay St. Louis is packed every weekend as people spend hours near the beach, in the restaurants and browsing the shops.
Finding a parking space often means a drive from one street to the next, searching for a parking spot to squeeze into.
It will be a challenge this busy holiday week through New Year’s Day, especially with the New Year’s Eve Oyster Drop and with several new businesses downtown.
“Seeing new businesses emerge and thrive in a community is always refreshing,” Mayor Mike Favre said. “They are a great sign of Bay St Louis’ economic growth and development.”
They also bring parking issues.
Mayors often say having too many people downtown looking for a parking space is a good problem to have.
Mayor Favre says his city doesn’t so much have a parking problem — it has a walking problem.
Pay to park
Want to hear people grumble? Ask them what they think of the paid parking lots that sprouted in downtown Bay St. Louis, the only city on the Coast where residents and visitors pay for parking the way they do in the Quarter in New Orleans.
Premium Parking, a company that started in 2005 and has parking lots throughout New Orleans and many other areas of the country, has expanded to Bay St. Louis. It doesn’t have gates or a ticket dispenser, just paved and striped parking lots.
Large, bright red signs direct people looking for parking into three paid lots near the beach. Once parked, they have various ways to pay for parking — by CameraPay, TextPay or by downloading the company app on a smart phone.
It sounds complicated for people who aren’t technically skilled, and impossible for someone who doesn’t have a smartphone.
For them, there is street parking. Or there is the city parking garage.
A hidden tower
That’s the “walking” factor Mayor Favre is talking about. The modern building that doesn’t look like a parking garage is just a block or two from Main Street and the beach. It has 120 parking places for cars and golf carts. And parking is free.
What it doesn’t have is the awareness of people driving downtown, looking for a parking space.
Directional signs are posted, but are small and easy to overlook when drivers are navigating streets crowded with vehicles and people.
An internet search for “address of parking garage in downtown Bay St. Louis,” comes up with three Premium Parking lots near the beach, but no garage. And the city garage that was built in 2010 doesn’t show on Google Maps.
The garage is on Court Street, west of the Hancock County Courthouse and Main Street. Look for a contemporary tower that doesn’t look like a parking garage and often has lots of empty parking places.
Free or paid parking
Street parking is free when drivers can find a spot in downtown Bay St. Louis.
“Pay before walking away,” the red signs at the signs say at the Premium Parking lots. Just like at parking meters in some towns, the parking times are checked often at these lots and hefty tickets are sent to the vehicle owners.
A check of the Parkopedia website shows the location of paid parking, how many spots are available and the cost, which on weekdays ranges from $2.49 to $3.66 for two hours.
The website doesn’t show the city parking garage.
The city’s been working on solving the parking issues for more than two years. A 2021 article in “Shoofly” says the mayor and council then were looking at making repairs to the parking garage and posting larger and more visible signs to the garage.
The building still needs cosmetic upgrades and the signs are still small and nondescript.
Business owners have jumped on the parking issues to help customers get to their stores and restaurants.
Some, like the new Fairly Local men’s clothing store on Main Street, carved out golf cart parking to encourage people to visit their businesses.
Cuz’s Old Town Oyster Bar & Grill posted on Facebook it will credit their bill for an hour of parking at the lot adjacent to the restaurant if customers can’t find a space on the street.
The mayor salutes their creativity.
“Small businesses in Bay St Louis are the community’s backbone, contributing significantly to our success and making us what we are today,” he said.
