Bethany Beach businesses, visitors concerned about changes to parking

BETHANY BEACH, Del. – An online petition is circulating among the Bethany Beach community to address parking changes that were recently made.

“It’s kind of silly. It’s a parking spot. But for us it’s like our livelihood,” says Kimberly Benton with Bethany Surf Shop.

Visitor parking in Bethany Beach is now very limited after officials made a change to deter people from coming to the coastal town during the pandemic. “The only two hour pay to park now is along Garfield and Pennsylvania Avenue and it’s used to be all along these parking lots on the beaches but now it’s all resident and if you’ve noticed they are all empty because there aren’t enough residential people to fill up the spots,” says Benton.

Benton feels these changes have come at a bad time for small businesses, “I’d say we were hit pretty hard with COVID. We were closed for three months so it’s more of like kicking us while we’re down when we’re just trying to get ourselves back together.”

Not to mention visitors who frequent the town in the summer tell 47 ABC parking has always been a concern so they were shocked to see this change. “We went up and down the streets because I thought, I’ve been here many times, and I thought you pay a fee which I’m willing to do but every single lot said residents only and I thought this can’t be for the entire summer,” says Judy Tirschman, a frequent Bethany Beach visitor.

But Benton recently started a petition to get the attention of town officials. “Just sharing what I know, sharing how I feel and seeing if anybody felt the same and it turned out so far almost 600 people do in less than 24 hours,” says Benton.

Benton says she knows things won’t change over night but is afraid of how this may impact the local economy as a whole, “You need people to be able to park to shop and we need to have shoppers to have employees.”

Meanwhile, visitors say they are fine with paying for parking and hope officials realize they never had to change it in the first place. “I don’t know what the answer would be unless they just go back to the old way in the residents area where you pay to park,” says Tirschman.

Local businesses are hoping town officials will reconsider these parking changes by June 15th because that’s when the state moves into phase two and their capacity limits increase.

Benton says the local chamber of commerce is aware of the concerns and they are working to find a solution. She also says she reached out to elected town officials but hasn’t heard back.

According to the town’s website, they are monitoring the changes for effectiveness and the parking changes may be modified as phased restrictions are eased.