SoNo’s Webster Parking Lot Gets A Makeover

A long time ago in a galaxy far away, er, okay it was really Norwalk and 2002. A monarch gazed over his kingdom and decreed– let there be tolls upon the horseless carriages, so that ye olde taxed payers are freed from subsidizing parking. There was a cry throughout the land and some cried “free at last, free at last,” but that might have just been a recording heard on Martin Luther King day. What happened was that then Mayor Alex knopp decreed that all parking in Norwalk needed to be paid by the horseless carriage driver, and not the tax payer. Very quickly a series of unintended consquences occured.

The peasants revolted. The merchants gathered pitchforks. And “Dr. Frankensteen” did a tap dance. Ah yes, Mel Brooks is helping with this post.  Anyway, to deal with the complexity of handling so many types of parking needs, the very first plan to charge for parking resulted in the manned payment booths installed in December of 2004. On top of the increased parking fees, this just riled up the South Norwalk merchants and visitors culminating in a series of clashes between the Knopp administration and pretty much everyone else.

Some of the challenges were due to the byzantine relationships various buildings had with the asphalt. For instance some part of North Main street was in fact a business condo association that had property rights that extended out into Webster lot. Other buildings had no property beyond their walls, others had contracts for easements with the City, others didn’t and then there was the movie theater, operated by Crown Theaters at the time. Add the daytime retailer needs versus the night time restaurant needs and whatever the payment method implemented, problems quickly arose.

The parking fees became a major campaign issue in the summer of 2005, and once Mayor Moccia was elected into office, parking policy started to go through a more formal process. Economic impact studies were started, contracts were analyzed and bit by bit changes were introduced to the parking system including the removal of meters on wall street and the lowering of rates within SoNo.

Soon after this series of policy changes, a operational study was authorized to determine the best management practices for not only Webster Lot, but within the SoNo parking system. Coin only street meters became credit card accepting meters. Pay station equipment was upgraded. But Webster operated pretty much as originally implemented because none of the contractual relationships that governed the lot could be easily sorted out. The business condo owners on North Main St. sued to City which tied up how the lot’s entrances and exits could work. And until Crown sold off its theatrical holdings, the theater still had rights to free spaces within the lot. It took a long time.

Finally, after these many years of wrangling, the pay booths at Webster are being phased out. Instead pay meters will be installed throughout the lot and parkers will be able to pull into a space, walk up to a pay meter and punch in their parking spot number and choose from cash, credit, or validation and purchase time in whatever increments they want.

The big news out of this is the elimination of mechanical gates constricting entry and exit to the lot. The downside will be that now Webster Lot parkers will be subject to the same time expiration tickets that they didn’t have to worry about before because they would pay upon exit. But overall, not such a bad downside.

The Parking Authority will be voting on adopting this change on their Monday night meeting. According to Kathryn Hebert’s memo to the parking Authority:

As part of the implementation program, we will be doing extensive marketing and PR as well as having staff available to re educate the public and surrounding businesses how to use the new equipment.  In lieu of the cashier/security labor pool used with the exiting cashiering method, we are expecting to hire on street customer service ambassadors to assist the public not only with equipment use, but with other issues that may come up in that environment (where is a specific restaurant, how do I get to I95, for instance).

I recommend that we start the process immediately. We estimate the project will take 3-4 months including delivery and installation of the pay stations, removal of the booth and miscellaneous parking lot repairs.

The public should see changes to the Webster Lot in early 2010. Government moves slowly, but sometimes that’s a good thing.