New downtown Fort Myers parking options coming soon

Two new spots are coming for you to park on nights and weekends in downtown Fort Myers, but you’ll still have to pay.

Starting next Monday, the Lee County Jury parking lot on Broadway Street and the lot on Monroe Street will become available to the public to park on weekends and evenings for a flat rate of $5.25 for a 12-hour window.

We’ve all been downtown on a Friday night or during a festival, looking for a spot and circling the area to find one. These lots look at alleviating that problem, and although it sounds like something most people would be a fan of, people who go downtown every day for work told us they’re not.

We spoke with people who expressed concern over having trouble finding a spot on weekend nights, including Nicholas Singleton, who works at Downtown House of Pizza.

He said finding parking during event nights is tough.

What’s also tough is the fact that those who work downtown still have to pay for parking, even when they have to walk a distance just to find it, and he said he doesn’t think these new lots will address that issue.

“We might even have to walk almost half a mile just to get parking. Honestly, most likely, it’ll just still be full of people. Just give people more reason to have more people down here. I mean, that’s why they’re opening it up more, isn’t it? It’d be good to have more people down here, so I wish that would be for us, but most likely, it’s not,” Singleton said.

The parking in the jury parking lot will remain free for jurors only from 5:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Parking will be a flat rate of $5.35 for a 12-hour window from 5:30 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. Monday- Thursday and weekends from 5:30 p.m. Friday to 5:30 a.m. Monday.