Image: Potential Port Jefferson revitalization plan (right) compared to present-day layout of Port Jefferson (left). The two automated parking garages are represented by the large dark-green rectangles on the image to the right.By Josh Seidman
A project is underway that could make two, 35-foot-tall, robotic parking garages a part of Port Jefferson’s future.
This plan, proposed by Michael Schwarting and his architectural firm, CASArchitects, includes two automated parking garages and is part of a larger renovation of the village’s downtown and harbor front area – locations that village officials are trying to encourage people to visit, Schwarting said.
“If you come back to downtown, you need parking, especially in this village where the amount of available parking is a major issue,” said Schwarting, who has been a Port Jefferson resident since 2000 and a professor of architecture at New York Institute of Technology since 1987.
That’s where Schwarting’s proposal comes in. His plan is to replace part of the village’s Meadow metered parking lot – the parking lot behind stores on the west side of Main Street – and Gap metered parking lot with parking garages. Each garage could hold up to 350 cars and together would increase the amount of parking in the village by 50 percent, Schwarting said. There is currently around 700 metered parking spots in Port Jefferson.
The village recently received a $95,000 grant to examine this plan and whether or not it is realistic for Port Jefferson. The study, which will take approximately two years to complete, will look at how the project will be funded, the appearance of the garages and the flow of traffic into and out of the garages, Schwarting said. In any case, it’s going to be a number of years before Port Jefferson commuters, residents and merchants will be parking in any garages, he said.
Port Jefferson Mayor, Margot Garant, said that hopefully the automated garages will be able to provide the village with more parking spaces in the future. If the garages are introduced in Port Jefferson it will allow the village to “designate more resident only parking, green space and employee parking lots,” she said. Garant did not provide a time frame for when she hopes automated parking garages will be built.
If the garages were introduced to Port Jefferson, it would give the village a pay-for-parking system that would be very similar to the system in Great Neck Plaza. In Great Neck Plaza, which is about 45 miles west of Port Jefferson, the parking system has included both lots and garages for the last 30 years, said Patricia O’Byrne, the village clerk and treasurer of Great Neck Plaza. Local merchants, who can purchase a three-month garage permit for $90, are the primary users of the parking garage in this village, she said.
“We try and keep the merchants off the streets so that area can be used for shoppers,” O’Byrne said. “That’s the key.” After 3 p.m. on weekdays and for the entire day on weekends, Great Neck Plaza offers free parking in the garage.
The major difference between the proposed parking plan for Port Jefferson and the parking system of Great Neck Plaza is the type of parking garage. Great Neck Plaza has a typical parking garage where people drive their vehicles into the garage, collect a ticket and park. Because of the automated nature of the proposed Port Jefferson lots, all the drivers would do is park their vehicles on a track at the garage’s entrance, leave their cars and pay for the parking with a credit card. The garage does the rest, Schwarting said.
“Once your car is parked on a little pallet and you’ve paid, it takes off and finds a position for the car,” Schwarting said. “It moves cars around so it can be a very dense sort of parking situation.”
When the users want to retrieve their cars they re-insert a credit card, Schwarting said. The garage locates the car and transports it to the entrance where it’s facing forwards for the user’s convenience. This process takes about two minutes, Schwarting said. There are similar automated garages in Hoboken, N.J. and on Baxter Street in New York City, he said.
While these garages will increase the amount of parking in Port Jefferson, one of the major issues is that the garages will be placed in locations where there is already parking. Consequently, this would result in ultimately losing some parking in the village. One possibility would be to build the proposed meadow lot garage on the ground where the Port Jefferson tennis courts are currently located, said George Westbay, the chair of Port Jefferson’s parking committee. Once the garage is built, tennis courts could be placed on the roof.
“This way, all you’re doing is gaining parking,” Westbay said. “And the tennis courts would still be available.” Westbay admitted that the layout of the Gap lot makes it more difficult to find a way to add a garage without losing some of the ground parking.
A further concern is the cost of building and maintaining the garages, said Michael Mart, a current member and former chair of the village’s parking committee. In Hoboken, the cost per space was around $20,000, Schwarting said. While this isn’t the only cost that would go into building these garages, the construction costs for one of the proposed Port Jefferson garages is around $7 million.
Schwarting is uncertain of the cost in this case. He referenced Robotic Parking Systems, a company that researches and builds these garages, in order to get an estimate of this cost. Robotic Parking Systems’ website estimates that the land cost of building an automated parking garage is around $8 million, which brings the total cost of constructing an automated parking garage to approximately $15 million.
“The garages can’t be free,” said Mart, 65, who’s been a Port Jefferson resident since 1972. “Someone has to pay for them and it’s generally the users.” Schwarting is uncertain of what it will cost users of the garages to park in them. He added that many of the uncertainties are going to be looked into during the already examination of the proposal.
One of the village’s four trustees, Joe Erland, agreed that determining how the garages will be financed is the major issue as this project moves forward. He also said that before the garages are built, the idea needs to undergo a series of approvals by additional entities including the Town of Brookhaven and the local residents.
“It’s a long range project,” Schwarting said. “It’s a major project for a small village. It will probably be built in a number of phases, and these phases will depend on making sure that there wouldn’t be any down time for parking. We wouldn’t want a time when there’s less parking in the village.”
Video: Description of how automated parking garages work from Unitronix P2, Automated Parking Professionals
