CITY of ASBURY PARK Comprehensive Parking Management Plan
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CITY OF ASBURY PARK Comprehensive Parking Management Plan Submitted to: Department of Planning & Redevelopment City of Asbury Park, New Jersey Prepared by: March 2015 CITY OF ASBURY PARK Comprehensive Parking Management Plan EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The City of Asbury Park (“City”) is a 1.5 square mile Atlantic coast waterfront community located in Monmouth County, New Jersey. The City is characterized by its rich history as a seaside resort, a center for the performing arts, and its history as a commercial destination. The City is currently in the midst of a period of revitalization. A variety of large and small revitalization projects have been recently completed, while others are in various stages of planning and implementation. These projects are transforming the City’s Waterfront, Central Business District (CBD), Main Street corridor, and the Springwood Avenue redevelopment district. Along with this revitalization has come some concerns that the community’s need for parking to support continued growth and redevelopment has become a serious challenge, and in turn, economic revitalization may suffer. At present, the City’s parking system is comprised of several off‐street surface parking lots and a network of on‐street parking meter pay stations which are dispersed throughout the downtown and waterfront district. The City also owned one parking structure located in the downtown area which was sold to the State of New Jersey in 1999. The garage is open to the public on weekends but primarily is used to support the functions at the State Office building during weekday business hours. Several private sector entities control a number of surface parking lots in downtown area and on the waterfront. The privately‐owned lots in the downtown area and several in the Waterfront District exist to satisfy the off‐street parking requirements for particular residential, institutional and commercial properties. However, there are three privately owned and managed off‐street lots in the Waterfront District that were established by agreement with the City to address the parking needs of the commercial enterprises and entertainment venues that line the oceanfront boardwalk and Ocean Avenue. These lots are open to the general public and users of the lots are charged a fee to park. Real estate renovation and development projects, growing numbers of new and expanding commercial establishments and an upwardly trending pattern of new people taking up residency in the community have quickly driven the demand for parking, particularly in the downtown area, to and nearly beyond the capacity of the City’s on‐street parking system. Opportunities to further expand the City’s on‐street parking system are limited. The few off‐street sites exist where a parking structure might be developed in the future are all privately controlled and some are already used as surface parking lots to satisfying the parking requirements of existing properties. Questions have been raised about whether the City’s current parking requirements and policy positions used to determine whether new developments and revitalization projects should be allowed to proceed are still appropriate, given the new nature and characteristics of the changes taking place in the community. The Asbury oceanfront, with its reinvigorated commercial and entertainment attractions that line the boardwalk and Ocean Drive, has been attracting annually increasing throngs of beach patrons. Resulting seasonal traffic generation and demand for parking is like a tsunami that envelopes the waterfront area and surges well past the edges of the adjacent neighborhood. The concern for this area is how best to manage and mitigate the adverse impacts of this unwieldy but highly value seasonal influx of sun and surf worshipers. While, the City has concerns about its capacity and resources to take on any major initiatives relative to parking, it recognizes that it is time to formulate a pro‐active comprehensive parking management plan. The plan needs to define some immediate and practical steps that can be taken to relieve some of the community stress concerning parking and establish some key long term goals and strategies for continuing to deal with what appears to be ever‐changing and intensifying future parking challenges. DESMAN Associates was retained to: analyze the current situation, forecast the impact of trending circumstances, explore immediate and longer term problem‐solving opportunities, evaluate the effectiveness of current program management and policies, and to define a comprehensive parking management plan that includes a template for implementation. DESMAN Associates is a nationally recognized parking consulting firm specializing in all aspects of planning, design, engineering, operation, cost estimating, and financial feasibility for parking facilities and parking systems. DESMAN is headquartered in New York, NY, and also maintains offices in Cleveland, Chicago, Boston, Hartford, Denver, Washington, D.C., Fort Lauderdale, and Pittsburgh. Founded in 1973, DESMAN’s staff of approximately 100 parking planners, architects, engineers, transportation planners, and operations specialists have served municipalities, universities, medical institutions, corporations, sports and entertainment enterprises, airports and private commercial developers across the United States in their efforts to plan, design, build, finance and operate parking assets. CITY OF ASBURY PARK Comprehensive Parking Management Plan TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION EXISTING PARKING PROGRAM CONDITIONS .............................................................................................. 1 Parking Inventory Summary ...................................................................................................................... 1 Analysis of the Prevailing Parking Demand ............................................................................................... 6 System Operations & Management ........................................................................................................ 21 FUTURE GROWTH & DEVELOPMENT IMPACTS ON THE PARKING SYSTEM ............................................. 30 Central Business District (CBD) Parking Challenges ................................................................................. 30 The Waterfront District Parking Challenges ............................................................................................ 34 The Springwood District Parking Challenges ........................................................................................... 39 RELEVANT BEST INDUSTRY PRACTICES ...................................................................................................... 44 PARKING PROGRAM ENHANCEMENT RECOMMENDATIONS ................................................................... 58 Potential Opportunities to Expand the Supply & Availability of Public Parking ...................................... 58 Recommendations to Improve Parking Operations & Management ...................................................... 76 IMPLEMENTATION OF PARKING PLAN RECOMMENDATIONS ................................................................. 85 Recommended Project Implementation Summary ................................................................................. 86 Parking Program Enhancements ............................................................................................................. 85 Capital Improvement Projects ................................................................................................................. 88 Public/Private Partnership Initiatives ...................................................................................................... 91 APPENDIX CITY OF ASBURY PARK Comprehensive Parking Management Plan LIST OF TABLES Page 1. Existing Inventory of On‐ and Off‐Street Parking Accessible to the General Public ................................ 6 2. On‐Street Parking Utilization in the CBD Area ( Friday, August 8, 2014) ................................................. 8 3. On‐Street Parking Utilization in the CBD Area ( Saturday, August 9, 2014) ............................................ 9 4. On‐Street Parking Occupancy by block face for the Waterfront Area ( Friday, August 8, 2014) .......... 12 5. On‐Street Parking Occupancy by block face for the Waterfront Area ( Saturday, August 9, 2014) ...... 13 6. On‐Street Parking Occupancy by Street in the Waterfront Area ( Friday, August 8, 2014) .................. 14 7. On‐Street Parking Occupancy by Street in the Waterfront Area ( Saturday, August 9, 2014) .............. 14 8. On‐Street Parking Counts by block face for the Main Street Area ( Friday, August 8, 2014) ................ 16 9. On‐Street Parking Counts by block face for the Main Street Area ( Saturday, August 9, 2014) ............ 17 10. Ownership Status and Space Capacity of the Surveyed Off‐Street Parking Facilities ............................ 18 11. Bangs Avenue Garage Space Use and Occupancy Agreement .............................................................. 18 12. Hourly Occupancy of Selected Off‐Street Facilities ( Friday, August 8, 2014) ....................................... 19 13. Hourly Occupancy of Selected Off‐Street Facilities ( Saturday, August 9, 2014) ................................... 20 14. Parking Enforcement Staffing Schedule – Summer 2014 ...................................................................... 25 15. Summary of Parking Citation Issuance by the Parking Utility