By Gretchen Webster
WESTPORT — Steps to gather public opinion on new parking options in the Jesup Green/Imperial lot area, as well as possibly building a parking structure, were detailed Thursday for the Downtown Plan Implementation Committee.
A public “charrette,” or information-gathering session, will be held as part of the process at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 23, at the Westport Library. All are invited to inspect plans and give opinions on what they think the town can or should do to help alleviate downtown’s chronic lack of parking and traffic congestion.
Representatives from Colliers Engineering and Design, the firm hired to conduct the $26,000 study, have already met with several focus groups, DPIC was told. These include families, senior citizens, property owners and representatives from the library and farmer’s market. Other stakeholder groups the consultants plan to meet with include officials of the Levitt Pavilion and Westport Woman’s Club, according to Jacob Robison, project manager for Colliers, who attended the meeting via Zoom.
There is also a focus group the consultants call “Advocates,” made up of people who have been vocal about downtown parking issues, said Randy Herbertson, the DPIC chairman.
Not everyone attending the meeting, however, thought the firm’s survey adequately represents all the important groups with a stake in the issue.
“What about the merchants? It feels like the merchants are put to the side,” said Laureen Haynes, owner of The Chocolatieree chocolate shop, 66 Church Lane. Her landlord doesn’t live in Westport, Haynes said, and doesn’t know anything about the parking study or the charrette.
“A lot of shops are closing because of [lack of] employee parking,” she said.
Downtown merchants for years have highlighted the lack of parking for their employees, including Sheri Lebowitz, whose Sconset Square business, Bespoke, closed this month. The summertime closure of Church Lane, transforming it into a pedestrian mall, negatively affected her business, she previously said.
In addition to the absence of a merchant focus group, the consultants should also speak with the four Representative Town Meeting members from District 9, which encompasses the downtown area, and nearby residents, Sal Liccone, one of the district’s representatives, told DPIC.
“Why aren’t they considered stakeholders? Pieces are missing” from the study, he said.
Herbertson said that some merchants and RTM members may have been be part of other focus groups and that everyone is invited to attend the charrette to give their opinions. His committee and the consultants are looking specifically for opinions about the Jesup Green and Imperial lot area, he added, and not the Parker Harding Plaza renovation plan, for which a charrette was held in August 2023.
A second contract for a $46,900 study was awarded to BFJ Planning of New York City by the Board of Selectwomen on Sept. 25. The firm is tasked with studying the feasibility of building a parking garage, updating the 2015 downtown master plan and developing a comprehensive parking strategy for the downtown area.
The firm was given three possible locations to study for a parking structure to be built: the Baldwin parking lot on Elm Street, the Gillespie parking lot on Jesup Road, and the lot behind Police Department headquarters on Jesup Road.
The Baldwin lot could be the site of a parking structure on its own, or possibly with the addition of an abutting Avery Place lot. And the Gillespie Center lot could incorporate private property adjacent to it as well, Public Works Director Peter Ratkiewich told DPIC.
However, using private land to create more parking would likely require that the town buy the property, he said.
And the possibility of using the police property for future parking is not clear because the concept of combining the police and fire services in one facility at an as-yet-unknown location is currently under study.
Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman and has taught journalism at New York and Southern Connecticut State universities.
Always like a good laugh before dinner…..”“Advocates,” made up of people who have been vocal about downtown parking issues.”
I’m informed that, during a recent public appearance, the First Selectwoman used a slightly different word for those with opposing views on Parker Harding, etc.: “obstructionists”.
Like how the Community Gardeners were labeled a “special interest.”
We’re getting t-shirts, right?
ANTI BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION.
I guess I’m one of the obstructionists. Lmao.
Not that I give a fiddlers what label this administration wants to put on me.
I am a 22 year resident. I am a business owner and my investment in that business sits at multi millions of dollars. I own 4 businesses in this downtown.
But this administration purposefully does not consider business owners as the primary stakeholders in the parking situation.
Our business never says no to getting involved in any and all community events when we are asked/invited. We are generous with our time and our donations.
The problem with this admiration is it is clueless and ANTI BUSINESS !
nobody in this administration has a bulls notion about what it takes to keep a business viable. None of them ever owned a business.
They haven’t a clue.
They insult business owners with their pathetic policies, all in pursuit of an agenda which will destroy the downtown businesses, drive them to leave and go to other towns, all the while it is those businesses which enable the likes of the library, Levitt and farmers markets to even exist in the first place.
There is a very clear agenda going on here, and the “obstructionists” amongst us are spot on. We are onto them. They are like tantrum throwing children, who just hurl insults when they are not getting their own way. Us, Obstructionists? . NO ! But incredibly frustrated at the level of ANTI BUSINESS on display.
We are the main stakeholders, and we pay the property taxes in the downtown.
That makes us stakeholders. It makes us the number 1 stakeholders.
I presume with the long lots school the main “stakeholders” are the parents of children who will attend long lots. That’s understandable. It makes sense. And while I understand the entire town are stakeholders in long lots as we will all be paying for it, the focus is certainly on parents of future or present attendees.
So why then are the library and levitt and farmers market ( who pay no property taxes) even being considered stakeholders at all. The farmers market in particular pays nothing . Not a dime. And advocates of it need to remember this. Not one penny !!
This means they are NOT stakeholders. They are our guests. Not the first selectwomans guests. They are OUR guests.
And if there is a pecking order they are certainly at the very bottom of it.
It is the property tax dollars the merchants pay that allow these other organizations to exist.
They need to remember this.
We the merchants pay for DOWNTOWN pavements and street lights. All the red brick sidewalks, all paid for out of the merchants pockets. My business has a line item as part of my “nnn” and it is $6000 every year for 20 years – red brick pavers.
Separate from property taxes I might add.
Yet predictably, as we have an utterly ANTI BUSINESS administration, the merchants, the largest stakeholders by far, are not even listed as stakeholders
How exactly does that work ? Why would any administration that has a clue how businesses run, and wants businesses to stay and succeed, not be speaking first and foremost with business owners ?
Makes zero sense.
It is infuriating.
And it is just plain STUPID actually.
It is the height of ignorance.
Bottom line, we need this administration to amend its lousy policies which are patently
ANTI BUSINESS.
There’s an old saw about consultants: that they know lots of ways to please a woman but don’t know any women.
I was reminded of that when I read that the consultant retained by the DPIC to interface with the public does not recognize the downtown merchants as being among the “stakeholders” to be consulted, and that the DPIC thinks it is sufficient that some of the merchants “may have been involved in prior discussions.” If this is a joke, I can hardly wait for the punchline.
Perhaps we should authorize a study to find a consultant with expertise in finding consultants, so that that we can identify a new consultant who recognizes who the “stakeholders” are and interview them; that we hire yet another consultant to interpret whatever data those interviews produce; and that we then ignore those findings and proceed to do do whatever it is that the administration wanted to do in the first place.
There are a few problems.
One, ego issues, most obvious
Two, those who wish it to be harder to park over there so customers will tend to park over here, helping to increase rents of building owned Not at Parker harding.
Three, the obligation of the oath and public trust. If one buys property on main street one is at the mercy of the town, to not destroy parking spaces. There is a golden ratio of spots in parker harding to square footage of retail agacent, the administration can not be willing to break this public trust. Or they fail.
There is also the issue with a garage on Elm, in terms of egress and congestion. Very much like coughing with a bad cold, only in terms of cars piling into Sigrid Schultz’s driveway on a saturday morning.
Thees issues are norm for a small town that has outgrown itself, in importance.
And 6th, no consultancies can gain traction where vision is vacuous.
Good luck. Without the merchants banding together, downtown is doom’d.
There is, however, one spec of light beaming through the darkness — a visionary idea so captivating as to bring all parties together instantly… more on this….at the beach in socal…