Parking Inconsistencies with the Unified Land Use and Circulation Plan (ULUC)

This plan is substantially inconsistent with the ULUC because the 210,000 sf buildings should have 630 parking spaces for office workers and the Redevelopment Plan has reduced the number of spaces by 16% to 525 spaces. The 210,000SF office buildings would generate 900 office worker and based upon the traffic analysis, 70% would drive = 630 spaces. This plan proposes the same number of spaces that Streetworks has proposed.

So why would our town permit less than what is required?? Where are these 105 office workers going to park their car when they get to work? Also, Streetworks has identified visitor and retail parking needs which require another 100 spaces, and other than the 16 street parking spots identified, where are those cars going to be parked?

The town may have the goal to eliminate cars by reducing parking availability but the reality is that people drive to work and they will be creating traffic congestion as they drive around the neighborhood looking to park.

Welcome to the latest public parking shell game. Because the town has not clearly identified the total forecasted demand for parking spaces, they keep shifting spaces and numbers around.

As of 2/14/2023, the town and THA, the parking consultants, have updated their public parking plan. This is subsequent to the Planning Board approval of the Lord & Taylor/Train Station Redevelopment Plan for consistency with the Master Plan. They have now attempted to provide the one-for-one replacement of commuter parking spaces that they had pledged previously.

There will be 352 parking spaces (298 for commuters) in the north garage and 301 on the south side located in the south garage and south surface lot. This is how it is being accomplished.

1) they’ve increased the number of spaces in the north garage by 50. 32 are new parking spaces and NOW require a bigger garage, 18 have been swapped from employee parking to commuter parking., and 35 are reserved for the residential apartment building.

Consider this - there is an allotment of 35 parking spaces for the apartments in the parking garage. Why are private sector parking spaces being provided and built by the town of Westfield? Shouldn’t these spaces be located within the residential apartment complex property? If that were the case, the public garage could be smaller and less expensive,

Also, the ADOPTED Redevelopment Plan, as of 2/14/23, only permits 320 parking spaces in the north garage - so there is a PROBLEM - they can not increase the number of spaces - this would be considered a variance (this is one of the reasons why we recommended a PAUSE)

Employee parking - where are the 18 spaces that were removed from the garage being located? It is stated by THA that these spaces would be relocated to existing spaces on Orchard and Elm Streets by restricting those existing spaces to employees only and preventing shoppers from using them. Also, the developer and town continue to include locations in the analysis that already exist as new areas for capacity - this is a misrepresentation as these locations are in use.

What happens to shopper parking spaces? Shopper parking is being relocated from the lot 2 (north train station) surrounding the Christmas Tree to the lot behind Limani/Adlers. Of the 73 shopper spaces in Lot 2, 5 spaces remain in Lot 2 for ADA requirements and 68 are moved to Lot 8 which is further away from the stores downtown. This is very inconvenient, unfriendly, and is not helpful to shoppers who want to go to the core downtown.

They are now including 525 southside private parking spaces and making them available to the public on nights/weekends BUT they have not identified how many public night/weekend spaces are currently available on the northside. The question is whether these would really be used by the public when they want to spend time in the core downtown which is on the northside.