New Castle Taking Another Look at Downtown Chappaqua Parking
New Castle officials are exploring ways to ease the parking crunch in downtown Chappaqua, including a potential revision of the recently approved policy that allows each merchant seven free parking spaces.
Last week the town board and Town Clerk Jill Simon Shapiro, who oversees New Castle’s distribution of parking permits, discussed how best to allocate the available spaces to accommodate merchants’ employees and customers in the hamlet. Parking has long been a concern for Chappaqua merchants, who fear that an inadequate number of spaces could drive customers and business elsewhere.
“We don’t want to have any of our merchants to have a difficult time,” said Supervisor Susan Carpenter.
Among the suggestions proposed by Shapiro was to convert about 10 spaces in the South Greeley lot that was redesigned about two years ago from merchant only to merchants and two-hour parking for customers. Currently, there are 65 merchant-only spaces and 13 merchant and two-hour parking among the spaces in that lot.
Another recommendation would be to explore extending on-street parking on North Greeley Avenue past the post office, Shapiro said. That would add about 10 spaces to the downtown inventory but would require customers to walk a longer distance than they may be accustomed to, she said.
Officials also hope to conduct a survey of all downtown businesses to more accurately compute how many spaces merchants need. Earlier this year the town board waived its $150 a year fee for each merchant parking permit and installed a seven-permit limit per business. However, some businesses may not need their full complement of spaces while some of the hamlet’s businesses, such as banks and real estate agencies, may need more, Shapiro said.
Last week the board discussed possibly allotting up to 10 permits per business.
Since the permit fee was abolished there has also been concern among town officials that some business owners may be taking them even if they don’t need them. In the new permit year, which started June 15, there are already about 260 merchants permits that have been given out, Shapiro said. During the eight years when the town charged the fee, there was an average of between 150 and 165 permits issued.
Councilman Jason Chapin said the town needs to strike a balance between helping the merchants and their employees and making sure there’s enough parking for their customers.
“As a community we have to understand we want to please everybody but we can’t please everybody, and we can’t go on with more merchant permits without it impacting customer parking,” Chapin said.
Shapiro said since there are 134 merchants spaces and there have always been more permits issued than spots available, the parking will be on a first-come first-served basis.
Chappaqua-Millwood Chamber of Commerce co-founder Robert Greenstein said the organization would be happy to help town officials any way it can ease the crunch in the downtown, particularly if they needed assistance to determine how many permits each business needs.
“Parking in our hamlet is going to be a problem,” Greenstein said. “If they approached us we would certainly help them with a survey.”
Martin has more than 30 years experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, including a frequent focus on zoning and planning issues. He has been editor-in-chief of The Examiner since its inception in 2007. Read more from Martin’s editor-author bio here. Read Martin’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/martin-wilbur2007/
