Leviathan Hotel owner Peter Laing said Dunedin Mayor Peter Chin and council staff had been invited to the meeting to hear business owners' concerns about the loss of free short-stay parking spaces outside their premises.
The meeting on Thursday would be chaired by Otago Chamber of Commerce chief executive John Christie.
"Everyone I talk to who is affected by this is grossly upset. I think the council has got it wrong - grossly wrong," Mr Laing said.
Dunedin City Council planning and environment committee chairman Cr Michael Guest said the council had "bent over backwards" to help businesses fearing for their financial futures.
Recent complaints prompted Cr Guest to email council staff and Mr Chin last Friday.
In the email, obtained by the ODT yesterday, Cr Guest warned the council "may have underestimated the effect of removing" some P5 and P10 parks.
"I think we are getting to the stage where a halt needs to be considered" while some changes were reconsidered, he said.
Contacted yesterday, he said up to 12 complaints had been received, but he and council staff worked through the weekend - and met again on Monday - to find compromises for businesses with good cases.
That included retaining two P5 parks on each side of Frederick St, after complaints from business owners there, changes outside the Leviathan and at "two or three" other locations, he said.
He acknowledged mistakes had been made and said, "with hindsight", it might have been better to consult directly with individual businesses likely to be affected - a point Mr Christie raised during public consultation on the council's parking strategy.
Cr Guest said he would raise the issue at the next finance and strategy committee meeting, but defended the intent of the parking changes and said he doubted it was possible to please all businesses.
"We have bent over backwards to make some exceptions."
Mr Christie said many Dunedin businesses were concerned by the changes, and he believed council representatives should attend Thursday's meeting, at the Leviathan Hotel.
Mr Laing contacted the Otago Daily Times yesterday to voice his frustration at the loss of three free 10-minute parks outside the hotel's Cumberland St frontage.
They are to be replaced by parking machines and a new coach park, which could be used part-time for short-term P5 or P10 parking, he said.
The changes would have a "huge impact" on his hotel, as up to 80% of his business came from "walk-in" customers - many of whom were passing motorists who used the short-term parks to pull in to check if the hotel had any vacancies.
Mercure Hotel Dunedin general manager Kirk Dyson said a P5 zone used by guests and free parking in surrounding streets had been removed.
The hotel did not have on-site parking, he said.
After he complained last week, he and council staff reached a "compromise" allowing a bus stop in front of the hotel also to be used as a coach stop and P5 zone for guests at certain times of the day.
"We haven't got a win-win here. We have got a compromise," he said.
The Fix owner-operator Mandy Smart, a concerned Frederick St business owner, said she had received a "pretty big" response, but believed some businesses were still ignorant of the changes.
"People don't realise the enormity and the actual reality of it . . . It really is going to be a bit of a catastrophe."
