Sodano highlights parking recommendations
Consultant report to be presented to Council on Monday
A roadmap to help relieve the city’s parking issues is expected to be unveiled Monday, when the city’s parking consultant presents its final report to the governing body during its 6 p.m. workshop meeting.
Bullet points from 130-page report by Desman Consulting will highlight immediate and long-term plans of action, Parking Advisory Committee member Michael Sodano said.
“Asbury Park, everyday, is changing,” Sodano said. “Our goal with all of this has always been short range and long range plans.”
Among the immediate solutions will be extending the use of the state-owned Bangs Avenue parking garage [above] that the city leases. Currently, the city provides free parking at the garage from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays but will look to negotiate an agreement that will extend the parking to daily from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m., although it may not necessarily remain free at all times, Sodano said.
Another recommendation is to better utilize the city-owned municipal and transportation parking lots. Officials have said they will repave and stripe the municipal parking lot [right] and add meters in order to make it available to the public.
In the longer-term, Planning and Redevelopment Director Don Sammet said the municipal lot, which currently has 159 spaces, is large enough to accommodate a 510 space parking structure.
“This would accommodate whatever new development takes place as well commuter parking and overflow parking from the downtown,” Sammet said.
And while the transportation lot can accommodate 87 spaces currently, the city will look to utilize the space for employee parking to free up the municipal lot for public parking. There are also conceptual plans for constructing a parking garage there, Sammet said.
“Development is happening all around city hall,” Sammet said. “If we can get a parking structure on that site we will be able to serve what happens on Springwood Avenue as well as additional commuter parking. It’s an opportunity to create a bridge to what is happening on Springwood [Avenue] as well as what’s happening in the downtown.”
Talks with local developers also are in the works.
City officials have said they are meeting with residential redevelopers iStar Financial and Carter Sackman to use their land for parking.
The recent launch of new eateries and businesses in the city’s downtown business district has triggered parking complaints usually heard during the height of the summer season.
In the past few months, Old Man Rafferty’s was transformed into Prohibition, Taka re-launched at its new Cookman Avenue location, Cross and Orange opened in the historic Park Overlook building, also on Cookman, and the Asbury Festhalle and Beirgarten opened on Lake Avenue.
“Nothing is as cut and dry as it seems because parking is about land, it’s about management and it’s about who owns what land,” Sodano said. “The city doesn’t own a lot of land anymore.”
The parking study will be a public document, Sodano said.
“A consultant report isn’t a light switch and the solutions aren’t black or white — everything is gray,” Sodano said. “The city has a long history of development starts and stops, businesses coming in and leaving. All of that history and planning goes into the problemes we are trying to cut through.”
Moving forward, the parking committee will use the report to guide its recommendations to the City Council.
“It’s great that businesses have found Asbury Park and it’s great that the public has found Asbury Park,” Sodano said. “We are hoping to get these problems resolved as soon as possible but at this point people have to understand there is no easy solution. Everything is a process and I think what people need to know is that the processes has begun and it’s ongoing.”
The Parking Advisory Committee meets at 5:30 p.m. on the first Wednesday of the month in council chambers at City Hall.
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