Castle Rock cafe says parking tickets are scaring off customers

Castleview Cafe owner Tom Wurtz says parking enforcement in The Silo is doing more than irritating diners. He says it is sending customers away from the Castle Rock cafe, then bringing them back angry, confused and less likely to return.

Wurtz’s restaurant sits at 611 Wilcox Street in The Silo, a commercial strip shared with Salt Craft Meat Market, two salons and other businesses. Parking there is advertised as free for visitors, with drivers able to validate through a QR code or pay for parking. But Wurtz said the system has become a steady drain on his business since Castleview Cafe opened last July.

He said he spends about half an hour a day submitting parking notices one by one in an effort to get them dismissed. He also said about four customers a day return upset over what they believe are wrongful citations. One of them, Matt Rogers, said he was fined $104 even after validating his parking on his phone. Rogers said Parking Revenue Recovery Services told him the QR-code submission had been recorded, but the ticket was still generated automatically. For a small restaurant trying to build repeat business, that kind of experience can turn a routine lunch stop into a reason not to come back.

The complaint lands in the middle of a broader Castle Rock debate over how aggressively downtown parking should be managed. Town of Castle Rock materials say downtown parking has been studied for years, beginning with a 2016-2017 analysis conducted with Kimley-Horn and the Castle Rock Downtown Alliance. That study said parking management was critical as downtown grew and called for both near- and long-term recommendations to support future development.

Castle Rock launched another downtown parking study in 2025 and 2026 with the Downtown Castle Rock Alliance and parking consultants Fehr & Peers. Town materials say the work is meant to identify short- and long-term strategies for growing mobility needs. The town also says there are four free public parking structures downtown, plus surface lots, and that no overnight parking is allowed in those public facilities. Its downtown parking map was updated in December 2025, and a striping change on Fourth Street west of Jerry Street is currently recommended to add up to six spaces.

The dispute also echoes earlier state enforcement against Parking Revenue Recovery Services. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser announced a settlement with the company on Aug. 30, 2023, after investigators found it had illegally collected or tried to collect fines for parking that was already paid for, parking tied to the wrong vehicle owner or notices sent to people who had not parked in its lots. Under that settlement, PRRS agreed to dismiss certain notices, extend its grace period to 20 minutes, issue more than $31,000 in refunds to 442 consumers and pay $75,000 to the attorney general’s office.

For Castleview Cafe, the question now is whether downtown enforcement is protecting parking access or quietly punishing a local employer whose customers say they did everything right.