BY BILL SAN ANTONIO
The Manhasset Park District is planning to charge non-residents a fee to use its commuter parking lots on weekends in a move officials said would help raise revenues.
Beginning on Aug. 1, non-residents would be charged $5 per day to use either commuter lot located near the Long Island Railroad’s Manhasset station, which officials said remains popular on weekends because it provides a direct route to Manhattan’s Penn Station.
“We’ve looked around to Great Neck and Port Washington and it’s really hard to park there overnight, I’m not even sure you can,” said Mark Sauvigne, Manhasset Park District commissioner. “If you look around our lots on a Saturday morning, there could be 100 cars there at 7:30 in the morning and none of them have park district stickers. None of them are from Manhasset.”
The fee would be paid at a ticket vending machine that Sauvigne said would be placed somewhere near the station.
He added that park district code enforcement officials would likely issue warnings to non-residents who do not pay the fee, though he said a violation could amount to a fine of up to $70.
“We’re not doing this to hurt people. We want them to use our lots,” Sauvigne said. “We’re just trying to raise revenues and the fees we bring into the park district.”
The parking requirement would coincide with the opening of the park district’s forthcoming merchant lot at 61 Locust Street, a vacant residential property purchased earlier this year for the creation of additional spaces.
The lot would provide 15 additional spaces equipped with three-hour parking meters. Sauvigne said vehicles remaining in a metered lot for longer than three hours would receive a $70 fine.
Local business owners and their employees may annually reserve merchant parking spaces for $720 each.
“I think when they get a few tickets, they’ll see it’d be much easier to just get a spot for the year,” he said.
Sauvigne said the Locust Street lot could open prior to Aug. 1 depending on when officials finish paving the lot and painting parking stripes.
He said the park district expected to open the lot by the late spring, but the project was delayed by drainage problems and other issues with the Town of North Hempstead’s building department.
The North Hempstead town council approved the acquisition of the lot during a meeting in December.
North Hempstead residents have said the district lots do not accommodate enough spaces for commuters utilizing the Manhasset Long Island Railroad station, which is one of the few in the area that connects riders directly to Manhattan’s Penn Station.
During the question-and-answer portion of North Hempstead Supervisor Judi Bosworth’s State of the Town address in late January, Village of East Hills Mayor Michael Koblenz suggested the town explore building a commuter parking garage to accommodate more people living in other areas who take the train out of Manhasset.
Bosworth at the time replied that she did not yet know enough about the parking situation in Manhasset but understood the concerns of those who difficulty finding a space.
She added more “out-of-the-box solutions” may be necessary, such as a program that would let commuters park at their local LIRR stops and take shuttle buses to the Manhasset station.
