Amity Street lot yesterday afternoon, Jones Library top center
Amherst Town Meeting, which starts November 2, will be asked to spend $200,000 to completely renovate one of the busiest parking lots in town, the 33 space Amity Street surface lot.
The centrally located lot is contiguous with the Amherst Cinema, with the Jones Library directly across the street. A 2007 parking study found it was 96.5% full between the hours of 11:00 AM until 6:00 PM.
Of course what Amherst really needs to do is increase the supply of parking in the downtown, which doesn't come cheap.
There's been increasing talk about building a parking garage behind the CVS, which was the original preferred location back when the town ended up constructing the tiny Boltwood Walk Garage on the other side of North Pleasant Street.
CVS parking and town owned lot would require Town Meeting zoning change for a garage
4 comments:
Just watching the sausage grow... (to mix a metaphor).
$200,000 seems like an awful lot of $ to me. The lot isn't in bad shape as is -- is it? -- just heavy demand. How much does that come out to per parking space?
I feel as thought there is quite a bit of public parking downtown, including in the CVS lot & elsewhere, but that the town doesn't do the best job of marketing what parking is available.
Also, I hope that partnerships such as the Bank of America partnership that lets downtown visitors use the BoA parking lot after hours can increase. That is a great source of parking & a way to have more spaces available during busy nighttime & weekend times without building more parking spaces.
Good idea, 11:55! Why not have the ToA help performs a coordinated renovation of both the BoA and Amity lots at the same time, in exchange for a 20 year lease for the BoA lot?
If you are going to accept the $200k bs, why not $600k, these folks need to learn how to finish turning the screw. It's not like anyone believes that's how much it costs anyway.
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