ANTIQUE DISTRICT PARKING

As a resident and businessman in Red Bank for over thirty-five years I have always felt that well planned development was necessary for healthy economic growth. I was greatly in favor of the White Street Parking Garage to alleviate the downtown parking problem. On March 8 of 2001 I wrote the following:

“Listen, my fellow residents and retailers, without the Parking Garage the retail district property values will stall. The cost of doing business always goes up and we will bear the burden of those costs in taxes. If you believe that Stan Sickles, all the town planners and accountants, and 67 years of parking studies, are even half correct in their surplus projections, then the White Street Parking Garage is a slam dunk. Without it you might as well park our economy. Oh yeah, and it also goes a long way in solving the Parking problem Red Bank has been working on for sixty-eight years. I guess "build or get off the lot" is a fitting statement at this time.”

Most of us knew the garage was a political football between the Democrats and Republicans and the garage itself was not really the issue. It could have and should have been built by know. Hopefully it can still be brought back as the lack of it is hurting the downtown retailers in major ways, ask any of them.

I see a major problem coming to the Antique District in the way of parking. Many of us in the Antique District are in favor of the new MW Red Bank LLC however the issue of parking is a 600 pound gorilla coming down the street and is going to need a lot of attention from the town as well as the developers and local business men. Right now the Two River Theater has 100 parking spaces on their lot and seats 350 plus staff. On any given show night the lot is full and spills over and fills the Blaisdell parking lot next to it. There are only 37 parking spaces on Bridge Ave and they fill up quickly. Under the project by Terranomics the Blasidell lot will be gone and a parking garage with 241 spaces will be built.

If we do the math that will leave the garage and Bridge Ave with 278 parking spaces. The tenets of the new building will get 110 spaces or one for each apartment but if they have two cars they are entitled to a resident parking sticker and can park on the street. The theater already needs 80 extra spaces on show nights. Danny’s uses about 100 spaces or more a night and the new Brew Pub which is three times my size should need about 300 spaces a night. The staff and other four restaurants on the block also need parking spaces. If you do the math we are short about 350 spaces a night. I think if we put our heads together the town, the local businessmen and developers we can generate some great ideas to meet this parking need. What we don’t need is for Red Bank to get even a worse reputation for parking.