Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - It was a spectacular weekend of baseball in the City of Buffalo with the Savannah Bananas bringing their incredible talents to Sahlen Field. However, some parking prices in-and-around the ballpark downtown is leaving some locals with sticker shock.
For some privately-owned lots in the city, prices for parking reached as high as $50, sparking some disgruntlement amongst those heading to Sahlen Field to take any one of the three games taking place this past Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz says this is not the first time this has happened with a major event in the community.
"It's unfortunate when you see lot owners do that, take advantage of our locals or people coming from out of the area to enjoy an event. This has happened previously with the NCAAs over at the arena, it's happened with concerts," said Poloncarz. "If you go to a Bisons game, you're going to be able to get parking pretty cheap if it's not during the work day."
Patrick Kaler from Visit Buffalo Niagara says the local hike in parking prices is an ongoing challenge whenever there is a big event scheduled to take place in the city.
"When we've got NCAA, major concerts taking place, other events, those lot owners do tend to put their rates up a little bit higher. Of course, it's all supply and demand, and the closer you are, you're going to pay a little bit more," said Kaler in an interview with WBEN. "Sometimes the rates do get a little out of hand, and that does create a little bit of a negative story like we're talking about right now for our community. But it is just kind of the nature of the beast. When you've got a lot of people in town, people need to park, and the closer you want to park, the more you're gonna pay."
While the City of Buffalo cannot control the parking rates established by private lot owners, officials are looking to do everything in their power to keep parking costs low for those looking to take in any event in the city.
"We like to keep our costs controlled to make a cheap option that's equitable for everyone throughout the city," said Buffalo Parking Commissioner Ray Wagner with WBEN. "We always try and push to the parking garages in the area. For an event like that at [Sahlen Field], we would suggest Adam Ramp, which is two blocks away. You can also park at Augspurger and take the NFTA train in for free. We like to promote that as much as we possibly can, but those would be the cheaper city options. And then obviously the on-street options, if you can find available parking on-street, for $2 an hour."
Wagner says the city-owned ramps are guaranteed to be open, which included this past weekend with an average of 386 parkers per-day for each of the three days the Savannah Bananas were in town.
"People are utilizing [the ramps] a lot, and we would like to utilize the ramps more, because you're paying a cheaper rate than the private lots. So we always try and direct people into those ramps as much as possible," Wagner said.
With some people locally in shock of a $50 price tag for some parking spaces in Buffalo for Savannah Bananas baseball, would the city be able to afford other similar big events that draw large crowds to the region? While the belief is the city can still host these types of events, it may deter some people from attending.
"It may turn locals from attending those events, because those are the folks that are coming down and they're talking about it," Kaler said. "People that do travel for events in other cities, or pay those rates in larger cities coming to Buffalo, they're a little bit more used to it. I think that might be the rub is that it's our locals that are having to pay such a large price to attend a local event."
"It might give people a bad taste in your mouth, I agree with that. It's just it won't affect our ability to host these events, but it might have people think twice about whether they want to come down," Poloncarz echoed.
"The irony is, especially on the weekends, there's no paying for parking on street parking in Buffalo. You can park anywhere on the street in Buffalo, as long as it's a legitimate spot, and you won't pay. You could park further up where you might only pay $5 and take the train down, and it lets you out right across from the baseball stadium. I think it's not great that the lot owners are doing that, but we have so many other parking options and abilities to get to the baseball stadium, like we do the arena, that if people know what they're doing, no one should have paid $50. They should have been able to park somewhere, walk a little bit or hop on the train and probably pay no more than $5. It's just sad that it happened."
Wagner says Buffalo is not isolated to this issue, as other cities are also dealing with private lot owners charging a significant amount more than what the city may be charging themselves.
"That's why we try and keep cheap available options throughout the city. With the ramps being in the downtown core right there, those are the options we would want to push people into," Wagner said. "Again, the Adam Ramp is two blocks away, it's very close to Sahlen Field. That's where we would want them parking."
Kaler admits he does have conversations with some of those private owners, and can understand where some lot owners are coming from with the substantial increase in parking prices.
"You look at the attendants that are working those lots, they're paying more for that manpower. There's also the cleanup a lot of times in those lots after some of these big events, where people will leave to trash, they'll tailgate before an event. There's costs involved with that," Kaler said. "I understand the economics of it, in some respects. Also understand they're making a lot of money off of this at the same time. So it's just kind of a pickle that we're in when it comes to these types of parking situations."
Meanwhile, the City of Buffalo is not having many conversations with private lot owners, as they can't control how they manage their pricing for event parking.
"They are able to charge what they deem is reasonable, or however they want to operate. That's how they operate, and we can only control what we own. Those are the ramps and the on-street parking," Wagner said.
A list of city-owned ramp locations can be found here: