The Ad-hoc Business Development committee discusses increasing downtown parking time limits. (Photo by Amy Porter)
WESTFIELD – On a request from the Greater Westfield Chamber of Commerce, the Ad-hoc Business Development committee, chaired by Ward 4 Councilor Michael Burns met on Thursday to discuss increasing the hours of on-street parking in the downtown business corridor.
GWCOC Executive Director Kate Phelon said two meetings were held with downtown members to discuss issues that concerned them, and parking came up at both meetings. While nothing was decided at the April meeting, a consensus was reached at the second meeting in July to increase parking to two hours. Phelon said the longer parking would be more business friendly.
“It’s important that we look at parking downtown as a whole,” said Community Development Director Peter J. Miller, who also staffs Off-Street Parking. He said on-street parking is not under the Traffic Commission, but he is in agreement with the two hour time limit.
Phelon said part of the discussion centered on spaces for employees in parking lots and to leave on-street parking for customers.
Miller said the Franklin Street lot is dominated by employees from the Westfield Bank and other nearby businesses. He said there are employees who park in every single lot.
Ann Lentini, Executive Director of DOMUS, Inc., who also attended the meeting said those lots have permit parking. She said with a permit, you can park anywhere except Reader 1 and the Restaurant parking lot.
Miller said that $25,000 earmarked for way-finding signage in Westfield recently made its way through the state budget, and the city hopes to be able to use it to direct people to parking lots and other sites, such as the Athenaeum, the Columbia Greenway Rail-Trail, and the turnpike exit. Miller showed a design for signs to be placed on poles in the gas light district. He said he hopes to install permanent signs, and declutter other signs.
Miller said the city has to identify public parking and no permit parking in order to let people know what the regulations are.
Burns said he spoke with business owners at Westfield FoodFest, who he said were “99%” in favor of two hour parking downtown. “The two-hour time limit in theory sounds great,” said ad-hoc committee member Brent B. Bean, II.
“There are time limits for a reason,” Miller said. Talking about the parking lots overall, he said any lot with over 85% usage is over-subscribed. Currently, 90% of the parking lots have been redone, with only the Church St. lot left to pave. He also said that too much free parking “is a terrible development strategy.”
Also present at the meeting was Kathleen M. Witalisz of Witalisz & Associates, a member of the Westfield Redevelopment Authority. Witalisz spoke about her experience as a real estate broker in the city. She said parking has been an issue from “day one,” and is one of the biggest challenges for a broker, to answer what kind of parking comes with your space.
Witalisz said it’s important to look at the next ten and fifty years. “We have plenty of parking; we haven’t defined it,” she said, adding that there would always be some abuse of the regulations.
Miller said that’s why they have a parking ordinance, because they are managing the turnover of spaces. He also said the city sells 250 parking permits a year. “We almost sell more permits than we have spaces,” he said. Witalisz said in that case he is already above 85% subscription.
The Ad-hoc committee voted to recommend two-hour on-street parking and three-hour off-street parking, and send it to the September 6 City Council meeting, on its way to the Legislative & Ordinance committee.
