(Credit: Steve Thurston, 2022)
A possible answer to parking needs in Glens Falls may come as added decks on top of the parking structure at 333 Glen St.
The City of Glens Falls did not get the $12.8 million federal transportation grant it applied for to help construct a multi-modal transportation center, FoothillsBusinessDaily.com has learned.
“We were notified that we were not funded,” said Jeff Flagg, the City’s Economic Development Director. “I believe only five projects in the entire state were funded, including one in New York City, one in Buffalo and a DOT facility in Utica.”
[Read more about the application and hub here. Correction: We first reported a dollar amount that was too high. The grant was for $12.8 million. More funding would come from other sources. We apologize for the error.]
So what happens now?
“As you know, we are in the process of doing a parking assessment study, which we hope will answer three questions,” Flagg said. “Do we need a parking structure? If we did, how big does it need to be? And where would it be located?”
The parking assessment came after public backlash and concerns regarding the transportation hub which had been in city plans for years, but had not been publicly discussed recently.
The city tentatively set the hub in the Elm Street surface parking lot behind the buildings on the 200 block of Glen Street. Placement of the hub and whether the city needed more parking spaces were among the concerns of many.
[Read more about the issues here.]
BFJ Planning, the New York City consulting firm that the City was required to use in the beginning stages of the $10 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative, is doing the study.
“It made sense to use them,” Flagg said. “They have that experience, and they are objective and not local, so they are looking at it with a fresh eye.”
That study is still ongoing, he said, and should be finished in the next six to eight weeks.
Flagg said a multi-modal transportation hub is still possible, but the new parking assessment study will look at other options, like building two more decks on the existing parking structure at 333 Glen St.
“That is one of the possibilities,” he said. Two more decks on that garage, which was built with the idea that it could be added onto, would create 150 new spaces. “That may or may not be how many spaces we need, but it probably would be substantially cheaper to add on to an existing structure.”
But there’s a wrinkle.
“We have DRI money for a parking structure, but it’s restricted to the downtown core area, and the 333 Glen parking garage is not in the downtown core,” Flagg said.
However, he said the City does have $1.5 million in funding from a state grant the late Ed Bartholomew secured before he passed away.
There’s also the issue of the sliver of green space on Bay Street across from City Park owned by the owners of 333 Glen that the city wants.
[Read more about the slice of property on Bay Street here.]
Warren County will not allow the property owners to subdivide the green space away from their entire property until they pay back taxes on the entire lot. Earlier this year, the 333 Glen owners owed more than $600,000 in back taxes.
There may be horse trading.
Flagg said, “Very likely negotiations are centering around their future needs, the city’s future needs and that green space.”