By Lauren Wanko
Correspondent
This may sound hard to believe — folks who actually like parking meters. In Asbury Park, lots of business owners think it’s a good thing for their bottom line.
“What people don’t realize is meters create parking, they create a turnover of parking spaces,” said Ross Blanco of America’s Cup Coffee Company.
And a turnover of parking spaces creates more sales for businesses like Fitness Lifestyles. Manager Leo Clark says he’s seen more foot traffic since metered parking was added more than five years ago within the shopping and oceanfront districts.
“People are leaving and we’re just getting more revenue from more people filling those spots that weren’t being used,” Clark said.
Ocean Grove resident Jim Rothe remembers what traffic was like before meters were installed.
“People would drive right through and you couldn’t find parking, keep on going, let’s go find someplace else to have dinner,” Rothe said.
Asbury Park Deputy Police Chief Anthony Salerno says a boost in business isn’t the only benefit.
“We actually have had a decrease in the number of car burglaries and vandalisms and auto theft. We attribute that a large degree of having special officers enforcing parking violations,” Salerno said.
Still NJ Fitness manager Corey Henderson says his customers aren’t exactly thrilled with the parking fees.
“It kinda hurts us because we get a lot of complaints as far as there’s not enough parking, you have to pay for parking on top of a membership,” Henderson said.
America’s Cup Coffee Company owner Ross Blanco thinks the parking meters are too complicated and enforcement should be a bit more relaxed.
“They are way too quick to hand out a ticket,” he said.
“One minute over, you’re nixed,” said resident Ian Jackson.
“That’s not true. The parking spaces are given a 10-minute grace period by which we don’t write a summons until the space has expired for 10 minutes,” Salerno said.
Salerno says parking tickets have decreased by more than 500 this year compared to the same period in 2013.
Meantime parking meter revenue has increased. It’s up by more than 500,000 over last year. Revenue to date totals more than $2.5 million. The city manager tells NJTV News that money is used to offset the cost of municipal government — like police, fire, sewer and roads. Blanco doesn’t mind that his customers have to feed the meter, so long as they can feed it.
Blanco says a couple of parking pay stations near his coffee shop haven’t been working for days. The meter is right in front of his business and he fears he’s losing customers because it is out of order.
The Parking Authority says four out of 100 parking machines are currently not working and that broken ones are usually fixed within three days.
“When something is used as often as they were this year, there are going to be some mechanical breakdowns at which point we will straighten that out and fix the meter,” Salerno said.
Meantime these business owners are counting a constant flowing traffic, both on the street and through their doors.