When people and businesses howl about a lack of parking, what they really mean is a lack of foot traffic. When those businesses set up in a downtown environment, they must understand that foot traffic and parking are often mutually exclusive concepts. This video helps to explain the reasons.
KW Parking from Kronberg Wall on Vimeo.
A few years ago, we operated a Jenkintown-related website called Jenkintown Station where we commented and reported on issues related to Jenkintown’s development. The site had no affiliation to SEPTA or the the train station, but it did a good job attracting comments from readers. We plan to resurrect it, but while working on that, we found this 2010 article about the $2.4 million parking lot. It’s a good time to revisit, but look for the site to return soon.
Today, a faithful reader pointed me to this video [since removed from YouTube] taken two years ago in which Borough Council Member Sandra Goldman discussed Jenkintown’s new parking plan, where our borough would spend $2.5 million on a parking lot in the center of town in an attempt to attract businesses. As a long-time and acute follower of these issues, I heard Ms. Goldman spout the all-too-familiar refrain that businesses seemed to want more parking.
Well, not exactly. What businesses ultimately want is more customers, and I can tell you from general observation that parking does not by itself do this. Whenever I hear anyone from Jenkintown complain about our “lack” of parking, and that if we’d only build a (name your number)-sized lot, why, we could lead the whole country out of recession!
These people always fail to consider all the shining examples all around us of thriving business districts, big and small, with a perceived dearth of parking. Shall I name a few? Why not…
Manayunk, Chestnut Hill, Old City, Rittenhouse Square, Northern Liberties, Doylestown, Ambler, Phoenixville, New Hope…
And yet, despite the lack of parking, people crowd the sidewalks, especially on weekends. So, what gives?
First and foremost, all these districts share at least one thing in common: Charm. You simply cannot have charm without a charming streetscape, and in most of these cases, this means historic, well-preserved, and well-kept structures. It does not mean wide, barren swaths of asphalt.
Businesses found in these districts typically attract a wealthier, better-educated demographic — people who have at least some appreciation for the value of the built environment and seek out such places that preserve this aesthetic.
As the saying goes, to a man with a hammer, every problem is a nail. The Borough has no power to stir business development, but they do have the power of eminent domain, which they wielded by taking the property from the Pioneer Fire Company and kicking out the active business operating there.
Parking lots attract nothing. If you have to tear down your buildings and dislodge people to make them, then you work at cross purposes. Anyone who tells me that they will only shop where they can find an easy (and free) place to park usually doesn’t bother shopping in the kind of business district the JCA presumably hopes to develop. They go to Wal-Mart. They go to the Willow Grove Mall. They go to Olive Garden. In other words, we’ve already lost them. Stop wasting our money destroying our town trying to bring them back.
Make Jenkintown a better place to live, and people will want to come visit. Make it a pleasant place to walk, and people will park their cars wherever they find a space.
On our Facebook page, Jenkintown Borough Councilor Rick Bunker wrote the following in response to a recent post about the extent of the public right of way:
You seem to be confusing ownership of the land, and the public right of way.
You own it.
But the public has the right to traverse it. And the utilities have some rights, too. They can even trim back trees away from power lines, etc. PennDOT can put up signs or traffic controls.
But you still own it. You can decide what to plant on it. You can have a picnic there without getting permission from anyone. You can ask people to leave it, and except for the provisions of the right of way allowing them access to the sidewalk for walking through, if they refuse they are trespassing and you can call the cops on them. Subject to zoning you can build stuff on it, rent it out, bury dead goldfish in it. It is yours. If someone is hurt there you get sued. You can pass ownership on to your heirs.
Just received a call from a very nice person at the Montgomery County Recorder of Deeds in response to a letter we sent last week. We have been trying to establish who owns what, and according to this official, the public right of way is indeed public property — just like the roads, the parks, and Borough Hall.
In other words, we don’t own it.
The County’s Tax Maps, which basically show the land we purchased and for which we pay taxes, are sufficient to indicate ownership. As we have previously wrote, these maps indicate a forty foot right-of-way, which encompasses the road, curbs, sidewalks, and another three feet of my front yard.
You can look up these maps online here. Just enter your address, and see for yourself. The actual printed maps are available at the County Assessors office.
Despite the assertions of Councilor Rick Bunker, this means that our ordinance does indeed force individual homeowners to directly pay for repairs to public property. In our discussions with residents of Jenkintown and other boroughs, people registered all manner of confusion about this issue. Some did indeed believe that they owned the sidewalks — that they lie within their property boundaries.
This also means that we have an ordinance that can be revoked by a simple majority vote of the Council.
Incidentally, the County official also asked us if we were Reds or Blues.
In a reasonable world, cities and towns would get their priorities straight and put our tax dollars where it serves residents best, instead of on money-losing (name your subsidized project) designed to attract more visitors.
I speculate, and the City may also, that the sidewalk fund will soon bottom out as the repayments lag, with the result that few sidewalks are repaired. But at least the City will be able to point at their attempt to address the problem. Perhaps it’s a cynical response by the City, but it’s a situation where cynicism may be the only rational response.Some will suggest that the City should assume responsibility for sidewalk repair and maintenance. I agree that maintaining walkability would be a government function in a reasonable world.
Source: Where Do We Go from Here?: Affording a $400 Sidewalk Repair
An recent exchange with Jenkintown Borough Councilor Rick Bunker brings me back around to the subject of parking. Unlike probably everyone in Borough Hall, We’ve studied this issue for at least two decades, especially during our unfortunate experience of living in a Massachusetts city that had, by far, the largest downtown parking garage per capita in the whole region, and one that was almost never, ever filled — especially in its last 20 years of existence. You won’t find it there today. The city finally tore it down.
Councilor Bunker largely dodged questions about the cost to build and maintain Jenkintown’s newest lot bordered by Leedom and Greenwood. For those visiting our site for the first time, the Borough built the lot after seizing the land from the Pioneer Fire Company, ultimately borrowing $2.4 million, although it later received a one-time grant from the state for $1 million to offset the cost. We have shown that Jenkintown’s entire parking fund runs a deficit, largely because of the debt service to pay off this loan.
Mr. Bunker points to “a wonderful flowering of restaurants and businesses in the borough” as a result of this venture, but we think that a recovering economy, Jenkintown’s good location and demographics, and the investment of Lindy Properties as the real reasons for this positive development. The additional parking played a role, but we would argue that even without it, the businesses would have come nonetheless. Some of those flowers, by the way, have withered. Blame the lack of parking all you want, but most businesses die because no one wants what they’re selling.
Mr. Bunker proudly points out his effort to hold the line on taxes, but we would point out that Jenkintown Borough must raise taxes now to buy a new engine thanks to the poor decisions it made in the past few years.
