New Parking Pattern Planned for Pleasantville Farmers Market
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It will be the same Pleasantville Farmers Market but with a slightly different location in the Memorial Plaza parking lot when the spring-to-fall version of the popular weekly market opens next month.
Effective Apr. 2, the vendors will move to the south end of the parking lot close to Bedford Road in preparation for construction that will remove the slip lane to Manville Road as part of the planned streetscape project. That project is expected to begin in the next few months.
Farmers market parking on Saturdays in the Memorial Plaza lot will be on the Manville Road side of the plaza, north of the gazebo. A one-way entrance for drivers near the gazebo off of Memorial Plaza will allow visitors attending the market to park. Exiting the lot can be done by going onto Memorial Plaza or through the slip lane heading onto Manville Road until the slip lane is closed off once construction begins.
Steven Bates, the market’s executive director of operations, said there will be signage and volunteers to help customers navigate the new parking pattern.
Bates and Peter Rogovin, president of Foodchester, Inc. which runs the market, raised concerns to the Pleasantville Village Board last week that the free overnight parking in the Memorial Plaza lot would take up spaces otherwise available for shoppers. They asked the village to be more proactive in limiting overnight parking.
“The group that parks at the lower end of the lot, they know exactly what they are doing,” Bates said. “They are regulars and if they park during market hours when construction starts that will impact the parking capacity in the summer and those overnight cars might be a problem.”
Rogovin said the market is trying to manage turnover.
“When you have 10 cars parked there for the entirety of the market when a typical visit to the market is about a half-hour, we’re talking about 40 to 50 people who can’t get in and out.”
“They have the right to do that,” Mayor Peter Scherer responded, referring to the free overnight parking. “But in the bigger picture, it’s not helping the market, the merchants or the turnover.”
Scherer said potential solutions to that problem will be discussed at the next Village Board meeting on Mar. 28.
The village is about to implement a new 75-cents-an-hour parking fee on Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Village officials said that could dissuade car owners from parking for free overnight from Friday and into Saturday. Memorial Plaza permit holders will be able to park on Saturday for free.
The village is currently waiting for new pay stations to be installed before the new regulation goes into effect. There will be a grace period to allow the public to adjust to the new rules.
Rogovin acknowledged that most shoppers want to park in the Memorial Plaza lot. “But there are plenty of other choices for parking in Pleasantville,” he said. “There are eight other lots that help comprise over 400 spots within a five-minute walk. Six of those lots offer free parking. We encourage everyone to take advantage of these other lots.”
For a map of all nearby lots and other information about the market, visit www.pleasantvillefarmersmarket.org.
Abby is a local journalist who has reported on breaking news for more than 20 years. She currently covers community issues in The Examiner as a full-time reporter and has written for the paper since its inception in 2007. Read more from Abby’s editor-author bio here. Read Abbys’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/ab-lub2019/
