The City of Knoxville is contracting with the Public Building Authority to provide parking enforcement along one stretch of Gay Street in downtown Knoxville beginning Sept. 15th. PBA officers will enforce the public parking and commercial loading zones on South Gay Street between Summit Hill Drive and Hill Avenue.

Parking along that section of Gay Street is free, but it is limited to a maximum of two hours from 6 a.m.-midnight, seven days a week. The contract with PBA will ensure consistency in enforcement, in order to encourage turnover of public spaces along downtown's main corridor. PBA will have sole enforcement authority along that stretch.

The Knoxville Police Department will continue to provide parking enforcement throughout the rest of downtown. PBA already manages City-owned parking garages and also provides security and parking enforcement at World's Fair Park.

For the first two weeks of the new enforcement effort, uniformed PBA officers will issue only warning citations to parking violators. They will begin issuing parking fines on Oct. 1st. The officers will also patrol the City parking garages as part of their regular rounds, which will add more security to those areas.