It may seem like an obvious issue of discussion, but with the help of the Middle Georgia Regional Development Center in Macon, parking problems within the downtown district may come one step closer to being solved in the future.

“Sometimes you can get a space, and sometimes you can’t. It’s hard to tell if it affects business because I’m not sure how far people are willing to walk to get to a business. I can tell you that you can tell when the students are back, because you can look at the cars and tell which are theirs. You definitely know when the students are here and not here,” Hayward Jones, owner of Jones Barber Shop at 110 W. Hancock St., said.

Heather Holder, executive director of Milledgeville MainStreet, the nonprofit organization that is partnering with the City of Milledgeville and working with the RDC in plans for a proposed parking study that would encompass the entire downtown district, made the announcement of the potential parking study at a called MainStreet board meeting Tuesday.

“It’s not just the Hancock and Wayne street areas. If the study is done, the RDC will be examining all of the district, including any residential areas that fall within the district,” Holder said.

It was the final MainStreet board meeting for Holder, who has accepted a job in Macon and will see her last day as MainStreet executive director on Friday.

“I am encouraged by the possibility of a study, and think it’s a good start and I hope that the study does what it is designed to do. This is a parking study for the city in which MainStreet is assisting,” MainStreet board member John Alton said.

In the end, the board voted to approach City Planner Russell Thompson with a technical assistance request that would acknowledge the city’s willingness to have the RDC create the parking study.

“At the request of the Milledgeville MainStreet and Downtown Development Authority, the Middle Georgia Regional Development Center has developed an outline proposing a parking study in downtown Milledgeville. This proposed outline should provide you with an understanding of the process, information to be collected, potential findings, and usefulness of the study,” Gray Outz, government services specialist with the RDC, wrote in an Aug. 7 letter to Holder.

The study would create a detailed examination and assessment of the downtown area, which would include a study of how long a parking space is taken, where the person parking is going, how many delivery trucks park in the downtown area, the number of parking spaces available to residents and businesses, and a short-term and long-term need for parking in the downtown district.

For Hancock Street-based business Tre’ Bella, the news of a possible parking fix was positive — but Adeline Bramlett, manager of Tre’ Bella, still chose to take a more skeptical outlook on the long-term situation.

“There’s not much parking. I think the more parking the better. I just park where I can, and sometimes I even park behind the post office. Sometimes my husband just drops me off because the parking is so bad. I think it’s because Milledgeville is growing, and I’m thinking that there are still more issues to come out of the parking problems for downtown. I’d really like to see more parking downtown,” Bramlett said.

In other business, the board discussed the possibility of clarifying qualifications necessary to the microloan program available from the MainStreet offices, organizing a Streetscape meeting for merchants in the downtown area and a Wednesday evening work session regarding the future relationship between MainStreet and the City of Milledgeville.

“Wayne Street is really a sidewalk and pedestrian area,” Holder said. “As for our new location in the city offices, the city actually sees it as a savings for them.”