Parking issues in downtown Red Bank will soon be addressed.
Restarting its quest to improve its downtown area, the borough will send out a Request For Proposal for a parking study.
Councilman Erik Yngstrom said the major portion of the study will be the Special Improvement District, which is the downtown area from the train station to Riverview Medical Center.
“The goal of this is to provide a comprehensive study for the special improvement district that is going to be the geographical area of it – to come up with empirical data for our inventory, our shortage and give us suggestions on how to reduce that shortage, one way or the other, [by] thinking outside the box, thinking about future technology advances and future needs for our town,” Yngstrom said.
During the Feb. 14 meeting, when the council approved the resolution, Yngstrom – who is a member of the borough’s parking committee – reported on what was discussed regarding the parking issue the previous evening.
“Last night (Feb. 13) we had our parking committee meeting. We expressed a number of issues, but the main issue that we discussed was the parking RFP. We have basically finalized it, we want to release it [and] publish it on either Friday or next Tuesday,” Yngstrom said.
According to Yngstrom, once the RFP has been sent out applicants will have five weeks to submit their proposal. When all of the applicants’ proposals are submitted, the parking committee will have 20 days to select the final applicants. Thereafter the committee would like a face-to-face meeting with the final applicant.
“The original goal was for the downtown business district to increase the parking downtown, because that is really where the issues are. The issues aren’t in the residential areas,” Yngstrom said. “For this study, we wanted to focus on the city and help out the businesses that have had a lot of trouble with their parking and getting new businesses to come into the town.”
For more information, visit www.redbanknj.org/agendacenter.
Contact Vashti Harris at vharris@newspapermediagroup.com.
