HARLINGEN — The city’s move to designate long stretches of no-parking zones along Morgan Boulevard could lead one of Harlingen’s biggest employers to move jobs out-of-town.
Last night, city commissioners approved an ordinance designating hundreds of feet of no-parking zones along Morgan and Washington Avenue.
The ordinance allows the city to tow cars parked in the no-parking zones, setting fines of up to $200.
City Manager Dan Serna is counting on the no-parking zones to stop employees of Advanced Call Center Technologies Inc. from parking along the busy street, in many areas blocking motorists’ views of oncoming traffic.
But Bob Knight of Redelco Commercial Real Estate Leasing warned that the loss of parking spaces could lead ACT to move jobs to its other locations.
“The way I see it is refusing jobs and you sure need jobs,” Knight told commissioners as he sat in the audience. “Harlingen is hurting. Industry can go somewhere else.”
Mayor Chris Boswell asked Knight if Redelco had agreed with the city’s plan to designate the no-parking zones.
Redelco representatives appeared to nod their heads in agreement.
“It’s a good problem to have,” Boswell told Knight, referring to ACT employees parking along Morgan. “There are a lot of jobs created there.”
Outside the meeting, Louis Martin of Redelco said he and the Harlingen Economic Development Corporation are working to solve ACT’s parking problems.
“We’re doing what we can to maintain ACT at this point,” Martin said. “We talk to them every day about this situation.”
Redelco and the city apparently came to an agreement to prevent the city from imposing an even larger no parking zone, Redelco officials said after the meeting.
The no-parking zones will make it even harder for many of ACT’s 833 employees to find parking spaces, Knight said outside the meeting.
“ACT has other facilities. They can put their work there … if they can’t have the spaces for people to park,” Knight said. “Harlingen desperately needs jobs. McAllen is booming; Brownsville is booming; Weslaco is ahead of Harlingen.”
For about 15 years, ACT’s parking lot has spilled over at the intersection of Morgan and 77 Sunshine Strip.
That led many of the call center’s employees to park along both sides of Morgan.
Serna and staff at some nearby businesses have called it a safety concern.
In the last 12 months, the area has been the scene of six traffic accidents, Serna said.
But Redelco representatives said MTC employees’ parking did not lead to those accidents.
To add parking spaces in the area, Redelco recently built a parking lot at Morgan and Chaparral for ACT employees.
