Parking and Retail

So, they built this lovely new "destination" retail center in PG county: the National Harbor complex. It's like they took a bit of northern Virginia and tried to transplant it into Maryland (hell, they even went as far as to dig up a long-time piece of art from Arlington and move it over there). They're still in the "attracting patronage" stage of things. While there are many stores already there, there's a LOT more storefronts that are empty or in the "coming soon" phase. They're in that phase where they should be concerned about attracting customers, not trying to scare/piss them off. Establishing a retail center by having fascist parking enforcement generally isn't "recommended". Ticketing would-be-customers within two minutes of the expiry of the time on the meter really doesn't seem to be part of that whole "create an inviting shopping experience". Then again, when you have very successful, very established places (like the Tysons Corner shopping complexes) that don't charge for parking (let alone charging $3/hr), you really gotta wonder who it is they're trying to attract at National Harbor. I mean, they seem to be trying to set up something more suitable to the area where Fairfax and Montgomery counties border each other; not repurposed PG county ghetto.