Changes will help make sure congregants can attend services
Recent increases in traffic have made new rules necessary for First Baptist Church of Ellijay’s parking lots.
“Our first and foremost priority is to make sure that our membership had access to the parking lots during the time that the church is meeting,” church Elder Del Land said. “The second thing we wanted was to keep them available for the community as well when they weren’t in use.”
For a long time, the church parking lot has been open to the public in downtown Ellijay.
But in recent years, so many people have been parking in the lot on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights that church congregants haven’t been able to find parking.
“We’ve looked at all the different options that were available to us,” Land said.
To fix this problem, the church has made several changes to its two parking lots.
From now on, each parking lot will have only one entry and exit. The lot will not be open to the public overnight. It will also be closed Wednesdays 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. and Sundays 8 a.m. to noon. It’s likely the parking lot will also be closed for funerals and weddings, too.
“The no overnight parking thing is primarily for the protection of the folks that leave their car overnight,” he said. Church security isn’t present overnight, so the church can’t guarantee their car will remain safe.
There will also be a nominal fee for parking, payable by credit card. Maintaining an online payment website, gates and keeping up the parking lot all cost money.
“I suspect it’s going to be less expensive than any of the surrounding areas,” he said.
Many of the details of how this new arrangement will function are not yet clear, Land said.
It’s not yet determined how much the fee will be or how enforcement will work if someone doesn’t leave the parking lot during these hours.
“We haven’t really talked about what would happen if somebody violated that,” he said.
Under these rules, First Baptist Church of Ellijay intends to keep the parking lot open for public use.
“We’ve never had any problem sharing our parking lots with the community,” Land said.