Plenty for all? Montclair Planning Board reviews parking needs of huge project

A parking consultant for the would-be developers of CentroVerde, a complex of three six-story buildings to be built in Montclair's Central Business District, tried to reassure the municipal Planning Board on Tuesday that the proposed development would have more than enough parking.

STAFF PHOTO BY DAN PROCHILO

This illustration depicts the proposed third building, at the corner of Orange Road and Bloomfield Avenue, in CentroVerde. The Planning Board heard from the parking expert for the project developers, Montclair Acquisition Partners, on Tuesday.

Tom Calu, the interim executive director of the Montclair Parking Authority, spoke on behalf of Montclair Acquisition Partners (MAP), the company seeking to build the massive project on a 3.3-acre lot where there are now vacant Bloomfield Avenue car dealerships, between Valley and Orange roads.

Calu had been retained by MAP, composed of the Montclair-based Pinnacle Companies that developed The Siena and DCH Auto Group, to provide a vision of how shared parking would work within the Orange Road Parking Deck, which will serve CentroVerde.

A shared parking scheme assumes that the peak parking needs for various uses relying on one parking area - in this case, offices, stores, restaurants and apartments - will occur at different times. For example, the parking demand for the residences could be expected to be lower during the daytime hours, when tenants would be at their jobs, freeing up spaces for workers bound for the offices and retail establishments inside CentroVerde.

Calu said that, once planned additions are put onto the deck, the available parking inside it would be 523 spaces if motorists were permitted to park their own cars, which is what the arrangement would be after the first phase of the project is completed. Phase One calls for the construction of two buildings with a mix of uses, including 262 apartments, to be constructed on Valley Road and at the corner of Valley Road and Bloomfield Avenue.

The parking inventory of the deck would be considerably higher - 686 spaces - if the developers were to introduce almost across-the-board valet parking. A mix of valet and self-parking is expected to be rolled out once the second phase of the project is completed, which calls for either an eight-story hotel or another mixed use building, with 67 dwelling units, at the corner of Orange Road and Bloomfield Avenue.

Calu told board members that, even after the development was fully constructed, its parking needs would not push the deck to its full capacity. During the first phase, the maximum required amount of parking at any one time is estimated to be 460 spaces, Calu said - more than 60 spaces fewer than the allotted amount in the deck.

If there were no shared-parking scenario, which had been encouraged by municipal officials' redevelopment plan for the site, and the developers provided separate sets of parking spaces for each use, the total required number of spaces once the project was totally completed would be about 720, according to testimony at the meeting - a figure not far off from the total spaces provided under the valet-parking situation, Calu said.

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Plenty for all? Montclair Planning Board reviews parking needs of huge project