Plans to replace stand-alone parking meters with multi-space pay stations in the College Park Shopping Center parking lot are indefinitely delayed as city officials struggle to find a way to power them.

The seven new pay stations — which will eventually replace nearly 200 meters at the shopping center and surrounding areas — were slated to be installed in August. However, officials realized the solar-powered stations they intended to purchase wouldn’t work at that site.

“We’re having trouble finding a location where there’s adequate sunlight through the day to keep them charged,” said Bob Ryan, the city’s public services director.

“We’re working with the property owner to provide hard-wired power,” Ryan said. “We’re continuing to iron out the technical difficulties.”

As planned, five of the pay stations will go in the shopping center parking lot while two others will be placed along Lehigh Road and Sterling Place. Drivers can pay to park with cash or credit card at the new pay stations. But Ryan said he has no estimate of when the stations would go into place.

When the city announced in July its plans to replace the meters, officials also said they would purchase new pay stations to replace the existing ones in the City Hall parking lot and in the downtown parking garage that had reportedly worked very slowly.

Those six pay stations have been installed, and two more were added to the garage.

“The new-model pay stations have received positive comments from downtown merchants, who reported few customer complaints and more user-friendly operation of the new stations,” Ryan said.

As for the pay stations at the shopping center, students are divided on whether they would rather just keep the individual meters.

Junior Japanese and linguistics major William Grandon said parking in the shopping center lot is difficult as it is and pay stations will only worsen the situation because patrons who only intend to stay in their space for a few minutes will no longer be able to feed a meter that’s right next to their cars.

Sophomore letters and sciences major Josh Kidwell said it’s inconvenient to use pay stations and they would make it a chore to drive to the shopping center, which includes CVS, Starbucks and Jason’s Deli.

“I hate pay stations. Half the time they don’t even work,” Kidwell said.

Sophomore chemistry major Drew Needham disagreed, saying the ability to simply swipe a credit card to pay for parking is a much better system than a pocket full of quarters.

“I never have coins,” Needham said. “Nothing’s cash anymore.”

mccarty at umdbk dot com