Tuesday, December 21, 2010

NYBG Parking Garage Construction to Create Parking Nightmare for Botanical Square Residents

Well, the good news is that the construction of the New York Botanical Garden's new garage on Bedford Park Boulevard and Webster Avenue is moving along nicely after a lengthy delay awaiting funding.

The bad news is that, well, parking in the area will be a bitch whilst the new "intermodal transportation facility" is being constructed. Botanical Square residents will be losing 25 spots from January through May, and there will be intermittent street and lane closures as delivery trucks come and go. Come June, Botanical Square resident may just want to take their summer vacations early - Botanical Square South will be closed 24-hours a day to both pedestrian and vehicular traffic for the entirety of the month. Additionally, Botanical Square North will be temporarily converted to a dead end street, with no parking on either side, to accommodate 2-way traffic in order to provide pedestrian and vehicular access to the Botanical Arms building and the Metro North train station for pick-up and drop-off only. At this point of the construction, a total of 35 parking spots will be off limits.

We sure hope that NYBG has some free visit passes or, better yet, a free parking alternative for the residents of Botanical Square...this construction is sure to wreak havoc on their lives for quite some time.

For your convenience, we've converted the contents of the entire update into a PDF which you can read below.
Nybg Parking Update

And here's a survey NYBG would like residents to fill out in order to gauge interest for parking for the community:
New Parking Garage Flyer for Community Residents 122010
~ErLu

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

With minimal transparency and no cost-benefit or social-return-on-investment analysis, this project is spending $41 million taxpayer dollars -- that's $50,000+ per parking space created! -- and for what?

* The NYBG is blessed with outstanding access to frequent, dirt cheap, reliable, safe, and clean commuter rail, and there is an abundance of on-site and satellite parking (the latter being necessary only a few weeks out of the year).

* There are currently plenty of $85 monthly spots available, with no waiting list, at the NYBG's 81-space facility at the train station. There are only 300 passenger boardings at the station on a weekday, the overwhelming majority of whom arrive on foot.

* Barely 1/5 of the households in the surrounding Assembly district own cars. But don't worry! Asthma and obesity rates are sky-high.

It's a mind-numbingly awful use of money. But, uh, yeah, those people who aren't getting access to their "free" parking for a few months definitely deserve some perks.

Jim said...

All cities have these construction closings. Pittsburgh must be the worst right now.

iKNOWthatsRIGHT said...

This is going to be one the best improvments to this area for quite some time. Everyone needs to just chill out and deal with it. So they take away 35 spots for the month, but when they complete this "intermodal transportation facility" (why can't they just call it garage?) there will be parking for over 800 cars. Then when their done someone needs to fix up that dirty Pioneer next door with their 10ft tall chain fence and barbed wire with plastic bags cought in it. Whoes trying to break into a supermarket?

Anonymous said...

Word has it that the NYGB bought the corner the Pioneer is on and did not renew their lease that is up in two or three years. I doubt the NYBG will allow a place like that Pioneer to move in.

Also, this is word of mouth too, there is going to be a new grocery store on Webster and 205th across from the new school that is going in there. It should take about two or three years as well. This is all part of the rezoning on Webster.

I really do think Webster will be a very different area in five years due to this rezoing.

This is all word of mouth, but I just wanted to pass it along because I hate that Pioneer too. Yeah... who the H@#$ is gonna break into Pioneer?