Parking Recommendations to Be Considered in New Rochelle

Parking in downtown New Rochelle—the area where new restaurants are popping up—could be improved if recommendations from a study are adopted by the City Council.

City Manager Charles Strome III briefed the council Tuesday on the findings of the $10,000 study conducted by TimHaahs Engineers and Architects.

The city paid $5,000 for its part of the study, with the remainder coming from the New Rochelle Downtown Business Improvement District.

Among the recommendations, Strome said, was an immediate conversion of coin-operated meters to those that can accept credit cards and can eventually be upgraded to allow users to add money to the meters using cell phones.

The city had previously decided to gradually—over three years—to upgrade the meters.

"It's silly to do this over three years," Strome said, especially for a city the size of New Rochelle.

The area studied—the Core District—was bounded by Main Street, Huguenot Street, Lawton Street and Maple Avenue.

Haahs found that on-street parking in the core district was regularly at or near full capacity during the evening hours, as were the two library lots.

The other recommendations included;

• Converting "no parking" and "permit parking" spaces to metered parking.
• Increasing the public parking in the Avalon Bay Garage.
• Adding an attendant for certain lots during Friday and Saturday evening hours.
• Instituting an on-street valet parking ordinance.
• Enforcing parking regulations consistently.
• Converting Memorial Highway and Lawton Street to two-way traffic.

Two-way traffic on Memorial and Lawton is something Councilman Ivar Hyden, D-District 4, is in favor of.

"I've been pushing for two-way streets," he said, "especially Lawton, for years. This will benefit the downtown area greatly."