As you drive down Massachusetts Avenue for the fifth time looking for a place to park your car, you may have second thoughts about doing your holiday shopping in Harvard Square this year.

At least that is what some area merchants are saying these days about the perennial shortage of parking places in Cambridge's most lucrative shopping district.

"I've always felt that the parking problem was a great deterrent to sales," says Haig Agababian, assistant general manager of the Harvard Coop, the largest institution outside of the University in the Square.

"There's definitely a parking shortage because of a decrease in parking spaces or an increase in traffic through the area," adds Richard deMont of the J. Press Clothing Store.

Lauren M. Preston, the City's Traffic Engineer, confirms merchants' latest suspicious with statistics showing that on-street parking in the Square has decreased from 550 to 425 car spaces in six years due to area construction.

The loss of 125 on-street parking spaces was minimized, however, by the construction of 1500 additional off-street spaces at University Place Garage and the Charles Square Hotel, Preston adds.

The parking problem especially hurts small businesses where patrons only stop in for quick errands, says Mark H. Levine, the manager of Hillside Cleaners on Brattle Street.

"People get $15 tickets for double parking [in front of the store] and then bring them back to us," Levine says, adding that his store picks up the tab for three or four customer traffic citations a week.

"It's pretty nerve-wracking to fight meter maids and cops who could care less about anyone but themselves," says Levine, who argues that police should give business a little leeway in light of crowded on-street parking in the Square.

Some Square merchants are combatting the parking problem by subsidizing--at great expense--validated parking at local garages, acording to Agababian.

The Coop, J. Press, and a number of other business have offered the parking subsidy to attract customers. New garages at University Place and Charles Square and the older Fitz Inn Auto Park on Church St. offer up to two hours of free parking to patrons of some stores.

However, Sally Alcorn of the Harvard Square Business Association says she believes the climate for parking has changed for the better in recent months.

With the completion of construction projects at Charles Square and University Place, the Square has largely made up the 1200 parking spaces lost over the last two years, Alcorn says.

Alcorn also cites parking garages on Kennedy Street and in the Niles building on Mass Ave., which are currently under construction. Currently operating garages in Holyoke Center and at the Gulf Station on Mass Avenue will also handle some of the crush.

Alcorn adds that employees of Harvard Square stores are also facing growing parking problems.

"The Coop, for example, has roughly 500 part-time employees coming into the Square each week," she says.

Parking garages discourage employees from parking all day and are only interested in high turnover of parking spaces, says deMont, adding, "Anybody who owns a parking lot around here is going to make a lot of money."