In an effort to improve the amount of available parking spaces in the village, Village of Great Neck Plaza board of trustees voted last Wednesday to amend the parking regulations in the Gussack lot and change parking meters from a four-hour time limit to two hours.
Trustees cited resident complaints over lack of available parking spaces in the village as the reason for changing 66 meters in the lot located across from Village Hall.
“We are trying to address the need of some merchants to have spaces where their customers can park longer term, and trying to calm down, which is a very significant problem, the overtime parking,” Deputy Mayor Ted Rosen said. “Reducing the hours to two hours helps us enforce that.”
Mayor Jean Celender said the idea to go from four-hour parking limits to two hours was based on findings by a parking consultant hired by the village last year.
“We are going with a consultant that’s known in the field, that gets hired by many villages to look at their parking and to make recommendations and to study whether these recommendations work or don’t work,” Celender said.
Mark Wolf, owner of women’s clothing store Camp & Campus on 42 Middle Neck Road, said he was strongly opposed to the time change because it would hurt business in the village.
“If you want to chase people away, the two-hour limit will surely do it,” Wolf said. ““But you go to two hours and wait for customers to complain about it. A lot of people wont complain, they just won’t come back.”
Rosen said the village was trying to accommodate different interests as not all customers need the same amount of time.
While most of the meters will change to two-hour limits, the village will leave 30 meters around the perimeter of the lot at four hours.
Wolf said two hours is not ample time for shoppers to get everything they need when coming into the village. He suggested the village change the meters to a three-hour limit instead.
Three-hour limits would not help the village catch parking meter abusers, Celender said, as it would only allow them to check for meter abusers twice a day during the 9 a.m. to 3 p.m meter time restrictions.
Celender added they would be able to better enforce the rule at two hours.
Wolf said the village should try three-hour parking meters for three months and then see if it is working or not.
Celender said the village did not want to continuously change the meter regulations and wanted to get it right the first time.
“It’s a big deal to make changes. We do have to reprogram the meters, we do have to redo signage, we have to redo tickets,” Celender said. “We want to get it more or less right the first time around, if we have to tweak it, fine then we will have to tweak it.”
The village will also be changing the cost of paying for parking meters.
Meters in the Gussack lot currently take 25 cents for an hour of parking, but will change to take 25 cents for half hour parking.
While the board wants to get the parking problem fixed the first time, Celender said, they will look back into it in the future to make sure the problem gets solved.
“We have plans that we’re going to look at this again and make sure that it’s working,” she said.
