A section of the Plattekill Avenue parking lot in downtown New Paltz. (photo by Lauren Thomas)
New Paltz village officials have been experimenting with selling permits to park in particular spots for at least two years, and earlier this month Facebook users started discussing the results with vigor. The conclusion: in the main municipal lot off Plattekill Avenue, the signage is confusing, leaving some locals frustrated.
Mayor Tim Rogers announced plans to change how permits are used in that lot, reducing the hours that they’ll be in effect. The current permits in that lot are good 24 hours a day and seven days a week, but Rogers thinks that in the future they should instead be business hours only, good from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. to keep them available for other drivers later in the day. In addition, 16 permit spots in the middle of the lot would be moved to the back portion to allow for clearer signage under the proposal.
There are 78 village-controlled spots in the Plattekill municipal lot, and at this time 30 of those are permitted and the rest metered. Eight spots are leased to SamSix (corporate owner of 15 Plattekill) at the permit rate of $15 per month; the company also owns six and has another six due to a lease agreement with the village which trades those spots for the right for the village lot to encroach on that private property.
Trustees William Murray and Don Kerr applauded the proposal, which has also received good marks from village employees in the clerk’s office, department of public works and parking enforcement division.
“We’re not trying to make money off of parking,” Rogers said. “We’re trying to provide a service.” Dennis Young agreed, saying that the point of parking enforcement is to turn the spaces over more frequently.
Time for New Paltz to design and build a multi-story, well-designed parking deck (most likely 3-levels)
on the municipal lot on Platekill (between the Starbucks building and the Pretty In Ink Building)…the sloped site could easily be excavated so that one level of parking would actually be at a ‘basement’ level, with street facing retail filling in the current gap due to the surface lot. Two floors above that retail would be street-facing residential; with the entire ‘garage’ not visible from the street. Behind that street-facing space would be the 3-levels. This would accomodate more than 3x the current parking on that site, is a vast emprovement over a surface lot which contributes a tremendous amount of runoff toward the sloped site running down to Chestnut St. The Western Union/Smokes building would still stand with a pedestrian entrance running along what is currently the parking lot entrance. We have to start planning forward with the future in mind as we see Downtown continue to attract more residents, business and tourists.
Those permit spots (except for the ones right up against that 15 Plattekill Avenue building) are 90% empty – especially during the prime dinner/lunch times.
When people are planning on going out to eat in town, and come into a lot which is ‘full’ in terms of spaces they can park in, but has a ton of empty spots people cannot park in, it doesn’t endear them to New Paltz.