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Asbury Park kicks off the Fourth of July weekend with additional parking spaces along its busiest roads.

Acting on the city’s parking consultant report released in March by New York based Desman Associates, ‘the governing body implemented a number of different initiatives to better manage the City’s parking resources,’ said Councilman Joe Woerner, a member of the ad hoc Parking Committee.

The report outlined parking deficiencies throughout the city and called for better management of the permit program.

“The first step was to increase parking capacity in the city by 450 spaces,” said Deputy Mayor Amy Quinn, also a Parking Committee member. “To that end we worked with our developer [iStar Financial] and State partners to increase our parking capacity in the short term for this summer season.”

Below is a list of changes outlined by City Council members:

-In the downtown area, parking capacity increased by 25% with the addition of 266 spaces.

– 100 of those spaces are located at the Municipal Parking Lot on Main Street adjacent to City Hall. The lot was paved and restriped to accommodate both public metered parking and Zone 4 residential/employee permit parking from 5 pm to 9 am Monday through Friday and 24 hours a day on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays.

–  Another 91 spaces are available in the iStar owned and privately operated Lake Avenue parking lot.

-The state-owned Bangs Avenue Garage will remain free parking through the holiday weekend only.

-In the waterfront district, 193 spaces will be added in two iStar owned lots. The first to open will be the Seventh Avenue and Kingsley Street lot, due to open Thursday.

-The parking lot on First Avenue and Kingsley is expected to open by mid-July.

“Adding spaces is only one step,” Woerner said. “Over the next six months we will be working with concerned residents, business, and parking professionals to improve and better manage a citywide parking system.”

To that end, the City Council has approved a search for professionals to manage different elements of the city’s parking needs, such as management of its permit program, as the parking study report suggested.

Since the report was released, the City Council opted to keep its permit parking fees the same through year’s end but eliminated its guest parking program. The employee parking permits in the downtown area were limited to 300.

Permit parking for the downtown and Wesley Grove area was extended on Lake Avenue one block east, between Grand Avenue and Heck Street and Press Plaza [Emory Street between Cookman Avenue and Lake Avenue] is open to public parking only.

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