GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Organizers of next year’s NFL Draft in Green Bay are calling on the community to provide parking for the hundreds of thousands of people coming here for the three-day event — and they want to know how many people will be doing so.
An online portal is being worked on to show visitors their parking options.
Draft organizers recently sent out postcards to residents and businesses near Lambeau Field to gauge who will be offering parking during the draft and whether more alternatives will need to be pursued to meet demand.
“It’s going to be a massive amount of people, like this town probably hasn’t seen,” said Luke Ambrose, who lives near Lambeau Field and received one of the postcards.
The postcards were sent to property owners within a zone between Argonne Street and Ashland Avenue and between Cormier Road and 9th Street.
“Those are really the areas where we foresee people being able to park and access the footprint of the draft, the draft campus,” said Nick Meisner of Discover Green Bay.
Meisner says the QR code on the postcards goes to a survey that goes deeper than simply asking whether you’ll be parking cars. It asks which days you’ll be parking, the number of spots and whether you offer a bathroom, tailgating and easy in-and-out.
“We want to be able to communicate the amenities if we can, again depending on what the final result looks like,” said Meisner.
Meisner says people who work for the NFL have been here on gamedays getting a firsthand look at traffic flow and how far away people typically park. That distance is expected to be farther for the draft, which is why organizers cast a wider net with the postcards.
“Really outside of that is a little bit of a longer distance, so we’re really looking for that core area of parking availability,” said Meisner.
“I know myself and my buddies, they are probably going to come over and park here by me and hang out, and then we’ll probably walk down and kind of watch it from the street view as much as possible,” said Ambrose.
Organizers understand there will probably be plenty of people in that boat, saving parking spots for friends and family. A network of satellite parking with shuttle rides is in the works to make sure everyone who wants to get to the draft can do so.
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