(Credit: City of Glens Falls, 2022)
This transportaton hub drawing, from a 2005 plan, was part of the city's RAISE application earlier this month.
The City of Glens Falls’ plans to erect a “multimodal transportation hub” on the current Elm Street parking lot is getting some pushback from downtown business owners along with Glens Falls Ward 3 county supervisor Claudia Braymer. They are saying the city either does not need the parking, has not sought enough public input or both. City officials are saying that the construction of housing downtown will require more parking.
As FoothillsBusinessDaily.com reported on April 14, the city applied for a $13 million federal transportation grant to help pay for the project, which officials stressed is still in flux and could change in design and scope as funding options become clearer.
[Read more about the grant here.]
The current plan includes electric vehicle charging stations, bike exchanges, a bus terminal and perhaps some short-term housing, part of what Mayor Bill Collins says is $50-million in investment in the South Street area.
However, Braymer told Foothills Business Daily that there has been no public input since the City’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative plan changed to include the Elm Street parking structure.
“I think they should pause it, get public input, and try to work out a deal to put it where it was originally planned,” on a private parking lot near the intersection of Elm and South streets, she said.
[Moving the garage to the Elm Street lot was first reported here. The city also recently issued a feasibility study on a parking garage in the Elm Street lot here.]
“The Mayor [Bill Collins] and [Economic Development Director] Jeff Flagg don’t get to make decisions for the city,” she said. Braymer and Collins are both Democrats.
Responding to Braymer’s comments, Collins said: “It’s a shame Supervisor Braymer didn’t come talk to me…This is nothing I’m doing alone. None of this idea was mine. She ought to know more about the city and how it works.”
Collins continued: “Do I have current data? No. But I have a boatload of anecdotal information that we absolutely need more parking.”
Paul Bricoccoli and former city councilor Scott Endieveri, partial owners of the Bullpen Tavern, wondered about the need for parking and if the public had enough input. Ward 3 City Councilor Ben Lapham, in his first term, wondered if the parking lot is needed and if the city should pay for it.
Chuck Gohn, president of Associates of Glens Falls and Loomis & LaPann insurance agency, said he’s been working downtown for 26 years and has never had parking problems. The pandemic and work-from-home schedules lowered parking demand, he said.
“We have more parking than we’ve ever had,” Gohn said.
In the last two weeks he has walked through downtown, tallying empty spaces. He reported that midweek last week at 1 p.m. he counted over 500 empty spots in the city’s Park Street Parking Garage, the Monument Square parking garage and surface lot, and in the South Street pavilion lot. Much of the Elm Street lot is fenced off as a staging area for renovations to the Glens Falls National Bank building at 250 Glen St, but in the open two-thirds of the lot, he saw four empty spaces.
“The city needs to be challenged to demonstrate a need for another 350 to 500 car garage when there is excess supply,” Gohn wrote to Foothills Business Daily.
Flagg, the economic director, said that the new housing planned by developer Sonny Bonacio, along with Elizabeth Miller’s mixed-use project on Park Street, will create a need for more parking.
Bonacio plans to build two buildings near the intersection of South and Elm streets. The bigger, mixed-use building will include retail on the main floor and apartments above. It will sit on South Street where the farmers market pavilion is now. A proposed smaller building on Elm Street would be strictly residential, Flagg said.
Those two buildings could add 70 apartments, he said. Miller’s building will have 10 apartments on upper floors, according to earlier reports.
[Read more about her building here.]
Bonacio’s renovations of the Sandy’s Clam Bar building on the corner of South and Elm streets, the “incubator building” on Elm Street that Bonacio is buying from the city, and a third building will add another 18 upper-floor units, Flagg said.
“The pavilion parking lot will go away, and that’s 120 spots,” Flagg said. “And Chad Nims is thinking of renovating his building at the corner of South and Elm and putting in 16 units…It’s clear we are going to need parking.”
Robin Barkenhagen, whose 42 Degrees glass and smoke shop backs onto the Elm Street lot, supports the transportation hub.
“We have needed a transportation hub for years,” he said. “Jeff Flagg convinced me it was a good idea.”
The mayor promised the public would have an opportunity to weigh in on the proposal, saying: “We can’t change course because the 14 businesses there [near the Elm Street parking lot] don’t want it. “We have to do what is right for the community. We need to be careful not to hurt businesses, but I doubt this current plan will change.”