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off-duty cops to watch its lot, though people skirt the rules by walking in the back door, circling the store and then walking out the front door where they land right on the Greenville Avenue sidewalk.

Also, Melios Brothers Char Bar will tow.

Solution No. 3: What about a parking garage?

“When you look at other forward-thinking places, they have nice looking parking garages,” Tobin says. “If it can work in Boulder, Colo. I don’t know why it can’t work in Dallas, Texas.”

But he knows neighbors would never allow it.

Kingston sides with neighbors, claiming there will “never, never, never” be a parking garage on Lowest Greenville.

“People from the [surrounding] neighborhoods understand that parking is one of the important controls that the neighborhood has over the intensity of the use of the commercially zoned structures,” Kingston says.

Neighbor Mark Rieves, who lives in Vickery Place and formerly served as the neighborhood association’s president, explains this theory in more depth.

City code requires restaurants or bars to have one parking space for every 100 square feet (with some variation), but retail parking requirements aren’t nearly that high. If Madison Partners and Andres Properties, the companies that own the vast majority of the property on Lowest Greenville, had claim to more parking, they could justify more bars and restaurants, which make more money. As it is, the landlords are forced to figure out other options. This, Rieves believes, strong-arms the developers into creating a mixed-use shopping center with both dining and retail.

“It sounds backwards, but adding more parking just adds to the problem,” he says.

Solution No. 4: Stop circling and valet

There are five valet stations available on Lowest Greenville on weekends, and the stand shared by HG Sply Co., Blind Butcher or Truck Yard is complimentary and all open to anyone patronizing shops and restaurants on the avenue.

The problem, says Nestor Gonzalez, a runner for Dallas Valet on Lowest Greenville, is that valets regularly run out of parking spaces on Friday and Saturday nights, forcing them to shut down until spots open.

In search of a solution, businesses have sought the expertise of Pamè La Ashford, the city’s longtime program manager for parking services and enforcement.

Right now Ashford is working on a comprehensive plan for the valet services. In the next few months she hopes to enact a “corporation level valet service concept” that will be accessible to all businesses on Lowest Greenville. There would be multiple stands spaced out along the avenue accompanied by “maneuvering zones” approved by the city to ensure “less negative impact on traffic flow and quality of life of the surrounding entities.”

Once this is set up, educating the community will be key, particularly to encourage neighbors to use the valet services provided.

Solution No. 5: Walk, bike or Über

Kingston’s solution is that Dallasites should use this as an opportunity to get over their need to drive everywhere.

“If we can’t get passed that as a city, Dallas isn’t going to be a forward-thinking city,” he says. “We’re going to be a stunted hybrid where people can’t stand to do anything without their cars.”

The city spent $1.3 million in recent years to make the avenue more pedestrian and cyclist friendly, plus, pedestrians are beneficial for the avenue’s retail shops. Places like Steel City Pops and Dude, Sweet Chocolate pick up plenty of foot traffic as people meander the avenue.

So walk or ride your bike, Kingston says, and if you live too far away, just use Über.

Ultimately, if businesses, the city and the neighborhoods continue to work together, “and we don’t do anything except what we thinks benefits Lowest Greenville,” Pope says, he believes the parking problems will work themselves out.

“Everybody has their own struggles and fixes when it comes to the parking scenario,” Pope says. “It’s a work in progress.”