Poll: Will you eat lunch more often on Dickson Street now that parking is free until 2 p.m.?

A little more than a month after paid parking was implemented in the Dickson Street area, some merchants said their weekday sales dropped by more than 30 percent.

Shortly after that, the Fayetteville City Council scaled back the hours of paid parking enforcement to 2 p.m. instead of 10 a.m. in an effort to provide some immediate relief.

The merchants asked for much more than that (they wanted paid parking only on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights), but the council wasn’t willing to give up that much without at least 90 days of evaluation.

“I know this might not be the solution that everybody wanted tonight,” said Ward 2 alderman Matthew Petty at the Sept. 22 council meeting. “But I do think it’s a responsible decision with the data that we have right now.”

City staff will evaluate data over the next few months such as sales tax and HMR tax revenue before making any final recommendations to the council on Dec. 7.

So our question is this: Will you eat lunch more often on Dickson Street now that parking is free until 2 p.m. or are you gone for good? Or did you ever eat there that much to begin with?