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Parking is NEVER an issue. Gorgeous Saturday night. Just came from town. Restaurants are jumping. People eating in and eating out. Plenty of people strolling. And the Cottage lot is almost empty. Park and walk a couple of blocks folks. If Jerry could walk then so can you.
Re: “Reader says No Issue Parking in the Central Business District of Ridgewood”
This is VERY TRUE – PLENTY of parking available.
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Unfortunately, the fix is in…
FACTS WILL NOT change the construction of an expensive, useless Ginormous Garage.
I’ve never had a problem parking in town. Maybe it’s not directly in front of the restaurant I am visiting, but it’s also never more than 2-3 blocks away the center of town.
12:32 Time for a Tea Party then…
Not so sure about that 12:52. There is no shovel in the ground yet
Listen to The Hulk. He speaks the truth. Are you listening village council????
Perhaps a more scientific survey, rather than anecdotal evidence, should be used.
My own experience includes times when spots were not too difficult to find, but there have also been times when every regular, non-employee spot in Cottage lot was full, along with every spot on Ridgewood Ave, and every spot near the bus station was taken.
Parking is a problem because we all want to park in the same place. Even if we choose to use valet parking, it is a several block walk to get to where you were going with Ridgewood’s system. The private valets take up many convenient spaces just to locate their customers who want to be picked up where they are. This is all great (???) except if you are handicapped and can’t walk distances–and with people growing older that often means two or more could be in the same car–and there are no handicap spaces (which in itself is illegal!). So basically town will be full of eating establishments and banks and will serve as a meeting place for all the “important people” who want more and more services as their right to have. Lunch time might be busy, but there will be nothing else to bring people to shop in town, even if they are actually living in town in the new construction. There will be lots of available parking at all but those favored times.
annon99 . Good objective comments. adults and businesses dont build for Peak loading lest they suffer the consequences of idiocy. This is the taxpayers money people..Just say NO. is that not clear enough outside of the developers greed train..They will be long gone when it all hits the taxpayers bottom lines …
Not to be rude, but if you are handicapped or have a few handicapped people out for a drive who want to eat dinner in town, then the parking garage is not going to be a solution for you at all. I might suggest UBER which could drop you in front of your restaurant.
There is one set of parking spots that is always unfilled – unfortunately, those reliably empty spots are all in the designated employee parking section of the Cottage lot.
Walk by and look for yourself. Often the majority of the employee spots are empty. The Village needs to act on this, reducing the employee spots to more closely reflect actual usage by employees. A close examination will reveal that some of those spots are being used by non-employees willing to risk the ticket given the difficulty of finding parking spaces during certain times.
Is it possible that the Village has intentionally maintained the excess employee capacity for the purpose of increased revenue from tickets, since the income from a ticket for one spot greatly exceeds the income from quarters for parking in the same spot?
I now visit downtown Ridgewood less than any time in the past 25 years, based on the unreliable availability of parking. Glen Rock, Wyckoff, Waldwick, Washington Township and Ho-Ho-kus now receive more of my business even though I still live in Ridgewood. I suspect that I am not the only resident to decrease usage of the CBD based on parking issues. The planned addition of high density housing will not make that situation any better, to say the least.
In my 25 years in the Village, Ridgewood has wasted money on repeated studies on how to fix the parking situation without acting on the recommendations in any effective way.
Ridgewood’s CBD has long been a selling point for living in Ridgewood, but the attraction has been decreasing lately.
The mayor and council need to hire a contractor and finish repaving the roads and all the parking lots in the CBD and then go further. End of story,