March 28,2018
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Village Council candidate Janice Willett (https://www.willettforcouncil2018.com/issues )is advocating for the old oversized, too big for the foot print “Garagezilla “.
“Bottom line, we need to build a parking garage. But the question is where and how large. The current Council is looking at several proposals for a three-story garage on the Hudson Street lot—but the Council also imposed the restriction that the garage should fit strictly within the footprint of the lot and that it should hold about 240 cars. The existing surface lot has 75 spaces, so that’s only 165 incremental spaces. At a cost of roughly $10 million, or $60K per incremental space, they will be the most expensive new parking spaces on the Eastern seaboard (see p. 5.4-6 of this study). And we won’t really be adding any parking at all, because the Brogan and Ken Smith lots, which were formerly used by commuters and others, held about 160 cars.
We can do better. Let’s allow the garage to extend six feet beyond the footprint, as previous designs did, for a gain of at least 225 incremental spaces instead of just 165. And then let’s get the garage built.” https://www.willettforcouncil2018.com/issues
