The fate of the proposed parking lot at 61-63 E. Burlington St. in Riverside was officially sealed Monday night. But it has been clear since May that the lot, much sought after by businesses, wasn’t going to happen.
It was in the spring, just after village elections, that Trustee Mark Shevitz made a motion to table the item indefinitely. That motion evolved from dismissing the idea entirely into a study of parking options downtown conducted by Shevitz himself.
While that study ended up provided some useful solutions to the question of parking – shifting commuter spaces from Burlington Street to west of the train station is a good, though not fool-proof, and negotiating a deal for sharing parking with the Masonic Lodge is an interesting option – it ended up also being the rationale for putting the brakes on an idea Shevitz and his running mates never liked and would never vote for.
It is true that even without the Masonic Lodge lot, the village has created 43 parking spots for business uses. That’s great. It has also moved a bunch of commuters (20 or so permit holders) far from those businesses, which isn’t so great if you’re Grumpy’s Café and some of those commuters came in for a cup of coffee every day.
What we can’t understand is the revulsion this lot seems to cause among the new trustees. Much has been made about its purchase price and the cost to build the lot. The property is purchased; the village has owned it for nearly two years. It is an asset.
Ironically, prior to voting down the lot, the board went ahead anyway Monday and agreed to apply for a grant from the RTA, which would have matched 80 percent of the cost of building the lot.
Yes, the lot would be a commuter lot – that would perhaps get displaced commuters back near the businesses they patronize – but could also serve a business purpose, especially in the evenings and on weekends.
There’s also the issue of what now happens with the 61-63 Burlington property. As far as we can tell, there isn’t a plan. It could be sold, could be developed for some other purpose. Who knows how long that will take?
In the meantime, Riverside has two vacant lots half-covered in gravel on the edge of the business district instead of a usable parking lot – which remains an asset that can be sold or redeveloped down the line if need be – that cost the village … what? The cost of the land plus Riverside’s share of a grant.
Again, lot or no lot, the land has been purchased. If the argument must be made that the cost of the land needs to be figured into building the parking lot, then it also needs to be added into leaving it vacant and unusable.
On Monday, trustees opposing that new lot could have coupled their fine new ideas about finding more parking and completed the deal by providing the other bookend on Burlington. And with grant in hand, they could have been fiscally responsible to boot.
Instead, they dug in their heels to prove they were right. There’s more to parking than just numbers, but those trees were in the way of the forest Monday night.