Northampton asks for public input on parking NORTHAMPTON, Mass. (WWLP) – The city of Northampton wants your opinion on parking in the downtown. There’s a public meeting at 7:00PM Wednesday at the Northampton Senior Center. Northampton has a population of about 28,500. It’s a city of arts and culture and attracts in and out of state visitors daily. There’s three main ways to park in downtown Northampton. People can feed one of Northampton’s more than 700 on-street meters. You can also buy a ticket and park in one of eight city lots with nearly 700 more spaces. Or you can try your luck with one of the more than 400 spaces in the parking garage. Located directly behind Thornes Marketplace, the EJ Gare Parking Garage serves as the central parking garage for downtown. But ongoing construction has eliminated some of the space inside, making it more difficult to park. The city hopes to collect data on parking and use it to guide their decisions on how it can be improved. “With passenger rail service starting next month again and if that grows over time like we hope it will. What are the implications for parking? Do we need additional parking?” said Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz. Some business owners like Hilary Sloin say, yes. “It’s just frustrating. You come downtown and if you have to just pick something up, forget it. Unless you can luck into one of those 15 minute spaces and then I invariably get a ticket because I don’t get back in time,” said Sloin, the owner of Stray Dog Antiques. Some residents like Stacy Ashton don’t see it as a big problem. “I don’t really know what you can do to make it better. I would say there are a lot of spaces here. There’s a parking garage out back. There’s parking all along the streets. Maybe just walk a little further to get where you need to go. Exercise is healthy,” said Ashton. The city say’s they’ll be re-evaluating everything from from the number of parking spaces, to their fees and ticket enforcement. In total, there’s more than 2,000 parking spaces in downtown Northampton. If you can’t make it to tonight’s public meeting, there’s a parking survey on the city’s website.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 21:42:11 +0000
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