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Carrie Chitsey runs the high-tech firm 3Seventy, located downtown. She said she has eight positions to fill, but can't guarantee future employees a place to park.

"This is the list that we've put together of every parking company that has spacing or a garage downtown, we've called every single one of them just to see if they have one parking spot," she said."Not one of these companies has called us back and said, 'We now have a spot available.'"

Meter parking is not an all-day option either. The City of Austin frowns upon "feeding the meter." Depending on location, drivers are welcomed to stay only three to five hours at a time.

Across the street from Chitsey, Geoffrey Odom pays for parking. He manages a 14-tenant building. When his lot is full, he sacrifices his space when others need to use it.

"A lot of people have clients and they want to park back there and they can't and they have to find a parking space in the street and that takes extra time," he said.

New construction is adding to parking woes because workers also use the street meters. At Seventh Street and West Avenue, there are at least a dozen spaces used by people working at a nearby job site.

Some people want the city to ease the pain of parking.

"They've got to build parking. For every building that goes up, new high rise that goes in, a multiple of them have been planned, they've got to build parking garages for public parking." 3Seventy Chief Operating Officer Theresa Metzer said.

The City of Austin hopes that instead of more cars, there will be an increased use of public transportation and bicycle traffic.

But for Chitsey, the only solution is simply more spaces.

"We placed ads on Craigslist,” she said. “We've tried to do everything to get one spot from one house, one spot from another. We've offered employees incentives to bus to work, take the train."

According to the city, there are about 3,000 on-street parking spaces downtown and at least 14,000 off-street parking spaces.