Photo by Sean Quinn
With no handicapped parking available and a 15-minute limit on current parking, South Orange residents have difficulties visiting the government’s temporary offices.
SOUTH ORANGE, NJ — South Orange is planning to add two dedicated handicapped parking spaces to Academy Street as close as possible to the front of 76 South Orange Ave., where the temporary Village Hall offices are located, by the end of this year in response to the concerns of residents and its own officials that there is not enough accessibility in the area.
Deputy Village Administrator Adam Loehner told the News-Record that the village engineering department is currently investigating and designing the improvements that would be required to turn two of the 15-minute parking spots reserved for Village Hall into handicapped parking spots, including ramping the sidewalk and painting. When completed, Loehner said the new spaces should provide easy access to the front door facing South Orange Avenue, which is the building’s only ADA accessible entrance due to the codes and legal requirements at the time of its construction.
The current handicapped spots are farther down Academy Street, which is why the village is seeking to remedy the situation with the additional spots, Village President Sheena Collum said.
“The village is committed to addressing the parking needs of our residents, both for visiting our municipal offices and shopping in our downtown,” Collum told the News-Record in an Aug. 6 email. “We are particularly sensitive to the needs of our handicapped community, and I have asked our village engineer to evaluate and identify a solution to create ADA-compliant accessible spots close to the accessible front entrance to the building in which our offices are located.”
The plan to expand handicapped parking comes while residents continue to complain about the overall parking situation in the area, including accessibility. Jackie Herships is one such resident who informed the village of her concerns, telling the News-Record that it is difficult for people with handicapped placards, like herself, to walk long distances. It is therefore important that handicapped spots be located as close as possible to the entrance to 76 South Orange Ave., Herships said, which is currently not the case.
But the additional spaces do not solve the larger problem that Herships and other residents have — the general lack of parking for residents who need to visit the temporary Village Hall offices. According to Manuel Aguilar, a super for 76 South Orange Ave. who is employed by building owner South Orange Properties LLC, the parking deck connected to the property contains only spaces reserved specifically for building tenants — there is simply no room for outside patrons to park there. In fact, Aguilar said illegal parkers are ticketed and towed, and a guard hired by PNC Bank also patrols the deck to enforce bank parking.
According to Loehner, South Orange residents visiting the Village Hall offices are currently restricted to seven unmetered spots on Academy Street, each allowing for 15-minute parking, though he said that time limit can be extended upon request. After two of those spaces are converted into handicapped parking, there will be only five unmetered spots available for able-bodied visitors to Village Hall. There are also a number of metered spaces on First Street, Irvington Avenue and Academy, he said.
But that is not enough, according to some residents. Herships recalled a recent visit to the Village Hall offices during which she was told by the PNC guard that she was not allowed to park in the parking deck unless she was there on bank business, even though she had a handicapped placard. She said that she was lucky enough to find one of the 15-minute spots on Academy Street, but residents looking to park during more crowded hours would have a problem.
“It’s not a good thing,” Herships said in an Aug. 6 phone interview. “Village Hall should be accessible to villagers.”
Herships acknowledged that the situation is difficult, and that the village is not to blame. She said that she just hopes the village can negotiate with South Orange Properties to obtain parking spaces within the lot, suggesting that the building owner could buy back some of the leased spots or somehow make concessions.
But that will not be possible, according to Loehner. The deputy village administrator said that when the village was negotiating the terms of its lease, it expressed an interest in obtaining as many spaces in the parking deck as it could, only to be told that there were actually no spots that were not already leased.
Loehner said the only way for the village to provide additional Village Hall parking would be to take away metered spaces used by shoppers, which he said is not an option.
“At this time, with the exception of the need to improve ADA access as we have acknowledged, we have not perceived an excess demand for Village Hall business sufficient to justify removing the publicly available metered spaces,” Loehner told the News-Record in an Aug. 7 email.
The village’s downtown area will soon receive an influx of parking, however. Loehner pointed out that upon completion of the Third and Valley redevelopment and its parking deck, there will be 255 new public parking spots. These include approximately 220 commuter permit spaces and 35 hourly spots.