What does a downtown church with 20 parking spots, a 1000 seat house of worship, 850 members, 500 in regular attendance on Sunday morning, and 300 back for Sunday night need? Parking. It was not always so. There was plenty of room to park your horses in the 18th and 19th centuries. There was plenty of room to park your car when I arrived in Savannah in 1987. The downtown was a ghost town on weekends back then. Parking was a snap. It remained that way for about a decade. Then towards the late 1990s it started to be a problem. Tourism exploded. Broughton Street sprang to life. Hotel construction could be seen everywhere. The once empty Saturday to Sunday sidewalks and streets began to fill with visitors. Property values skyrocketed. The Lewis Law building at 123 W. Oglethorpe Avenue along with its 20 parking spaces and another 40 behind those are up for sale. It presents us with a generational opportunity to secure property. There is no other way to say it: we must make every attempt to secure it. The parking spaces can be leased Monday – Friday to downtown businesses.Our members must be able to park. The future of our mission to downtown Savannah, our ability to gather a congregation, to grow, to flourish in the decades ahead is related directly to the most mundane of matters: parking. I’m calling this a generational opportunity because another opportunity is unlikely for decades if ever. Look in every direction around our facilities. See any parking? Any potential parking? Any future parking?
~ Terry