“We believe this is not a good thing for the village. Down the road in a few years what’s going to happen if the economy sinks for a bit like in the past .and no one is shopping and we are back to having 50 or more stores boarded up .the town will look like a ghost town. It was very depressing looking Back then when that happened.who will be responsible from the top. Or will they all be replaced ,and again they will go after the little small time worker and lay them off because of financial crisis. Pretty much all village departments are short on staffing as it is. And now with recycling Revenues toppling down it’s actually costing the village to do recycling versus making money like in the past. Recycling department is a losing proposition. Yes it’s a law but at who’s cost the taxpayer again. Just like the parking garage unnecessary.Wake up fellow village taxpayers. This parking garage is not for the taxpayers it’s for out-of-towners pretty much that are coming here to park close to the restaurants . End of the story. Every Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday there are plenty of parking at the lower level of the CBD meaning By Ridgewood Ave., Maple Village Hall parking lot ,give me a break. If you went to New York City you would walk a few blocks , This is about lazy people. You take your family into New York City and you park in a parking garage , and how many blocks do you usually walk to the place you’re going. Right. This is a poor investment. This is not going to be a money maker .about time this thing is paid off it will probably will need to be Heavily repaired. Unless they keep on top of it every single year which that’s not gonna happen.”
Boycott the CBD. Don’t feed the meters or the kiosks.
We could sure use some of Coin Boy’s largesse now…
When i go for my daily walks with the dog on recycling days, the majority of the houses of piles of ‘amazon’ boxes at the curb which is a clear indicator of where the residents have been shopping. I haven’t bought anything in the CBD for years except to get my watch battery replaced at town/country or an evening meal/drinks. Retail is dead and dying and the pay-to-park just gives it another kick in the ass. The only need for parking is 3 or 4 hours on Friday/saturday nights unless you’re willing to walk 4 blocks, in which case there is always parking. This was nothing but ‘plum’ given to the developers in town so they have parking for their massive apartment buildings, and parking for the patron’s of their tenants restaurants. There should be ‘impact fees’ on these apartments in addition to real estate taxes since they are the prime beneficiary of the garage. We should have let NJ Transit build a garage at their expenses on the Ken Smith property. too late now. RIP good old Ridgewood. Hello ‘Montclair East’. SAD
So very true.
Now pray we don’t have a shit storm. They should of just repaved the lot.
When, exactly were there “50 or more stores” vacant in the CBD?
That’s what I thought…you can’t answer because it’s not true.
Even the architects of the garage said that the facility will not pay for itself so the Village would have to raise both street and lot parking substantially to help meet its costs. They also said that the lifetime of the garage would be 20 years as long as it was maintained regularly. Does this kind of attitude cause a huge smell wafting over it? This, along with all the NOT “needed’ other projections the Council and School Board think are VITAL will bankrupt the Village even before the economy starts turning down.
The aroma of “accidental misstatements–and outright lies by the builders throughout town” must smell like quality perfume to our “Movers and Shakers” as they will be surrounded by it for years unless they conveniently “move out” once they’ve shaken the town for all their personal needs as well.
Supposedly the talk of the street as the village borrowed $300 million because the interest rate is so low. Is this true well we are trying to investigate this info.