Administrator to present plan to Borough Council tonight.
By: Jennifer Potash
In an attempt to move the stalled discussion on temporary downtown parking measures, Borough Administrator Robert Bruschi will bring some new proposals to the Princeton Borough Council tonight.
Up for discussion is the conversion of a perimeter metered parking lot into a permit-only lot for downtown employees and the possibility of leasing space from Princeton HealthCare System for a surface parking lot.
The on-street permit parking proposal is also back for discussion.
Mr. Bruschi cautions these are just suggestions and nothing will be implemented without public discussion and approval of the Borough Council. He is also suggesting a sunset provision, in which the suggested parking schemes would be automatically phased out after six months, unless the council acts to extend them.
"I can’t stress enough this is all in the introductory stages," he said Monday.
Several downtown merchants and the Borough Council have been at odds for nearly a year over parking problems downtown.,
Some merchants say there is plenty of parking and merely a perception that spaces are difficult to find. Others blame the borough for closing down the popular Park & Shop lot off Spring Street without providing alternate space.
With a goal of implementing the changes by Labor Day, Mr. Bruschi suggests the metered lot at Trinity Church off Mercer Street be converted to a downtown employee-permit parking lot. If the changes are made, the current 10-hour metered lot, now operating at 50-percent capacity, could provide 39 spaces, Mr. Bruschi said.
In addition, developer J. Robert Hillier, who is converting the former Princeton Nursing Home on Quarry Street into apartments, will allow the borough to temporarily use half the site’s parking lot starting around Labor Day, Mr. Bruschi said. This would provide 24 spaces, mostly for downtown employees, he said.
The borough is also negotiating with Merwick Rehab Hospital & Nursing Care to convert a portion of that property into a temporary downtown employee parking lot, Mr. Bruschi said. The borough would likely need to create a gravel lot there and upgrade an existing one, he said, but the cost is not substantial.
These three options could bring in between 75 and 100 parking spaces, he said.
The target of these measures is the part-time hourly employee and permits could cost $30 per month the same as existing business parking permits.
In May, Mr. Bruschi suggested using portions of the mostly residential streets adjacent to the downtown retail and commercial businesses as temporary parking areas for employees
Residents, particularly those from the "tree streets" area, turned out in force to object to lifting the two-hour restriction on those streets. Council members didn’t outright reject Mr. Bruschi’s suggestion, but it received lukewarm support at best from the governing body.
The proposal to grant downtown employees temporary permits to park on nearby residential streets has not been dropped, but the streets under consideration have been reduced in number, Mr. Bruschi said.
Nearly everyone involved in the parking debate contends downtown employees feed parking meters in the central business district, which ties up those spaces all day. Palmer Square offers downtown employees a 30-percent discount to park in the Hulfish Street garage. Princeton University also offers its surface parking lots off William Street to the public and downtown employees after 5 p.m. on weekdays and on weekends.
"These are not the long-term solutions to the employee parking problem," Mr. Bruschi said. Nor is the garage under construction with a price structure that caters to short-term shoppers and visitors such a solution, he added.
A jitney service from a remote lot is the likely long-term solution, he said.
"The only way to do this may be to park employees outside of town and ferry them into the borough," he said.
An in-depth parking survey that tracks where downtown employees come from is a first step so the borough can figure out the best location for a remote lot, Mr. Bruschi said.
"If most of the employees are coming from Trenton, then a parking lot in Kingston isn’t going to help," he said.