I can’t help but think a lot of the pro parking garage noise came from certain restaurateurs. I imagine diners having dinner at their “regular” restaurants and the owner does his meet-and-greet walk-through. He see his regular customer and say,”Hi. Where have you two been? I haven’t seen for for some time”.
Now the diners are sort of regular, and instead of admitting that their lack of attendance is mostly about cutting back on dining expenses, they save face by saying, “We have tried to get in here every week but we can never find a parking place. We had to head over to Ho-Ho-Kus.”
The restaurant bosses hear this so often that they not only believe it, but it’s in their interests to believe it. Most of them don’t live in Ridgewood, so costs of a garage are irrelevant.
The over-developers paired with the Paul V.s of the village are playing the long game to draw families here to multi bedroom rentals with our schools as the magnetic force. It is very simple. Problem is, our schools are over capacity and our high school is well past capacity. So, how will our schools stay at the top? They can’t. That doesn’t concern the local developer, he’ll have sold by then. It will be someone else’s problem. It is simple and undeniably true. They lie about Brogan and Ken Smith parking spaces needing to be replaced, spots that are not a part of the public parking inventory. “Smiling faces with hidden agendas”.
The garage is the Trojan Horse. The village now admits, we don’t need more parking, we don’t even utilize what we have.
So it’s a meme.
We don’t want to be Hackensack or victimized by Transit Villages developments like The massive Highlands at Morristown Train Station Nightmare.
Not to mention that more than a few are overpriced. Eventually that catches up.