AMHERST — As a way to encourage more families to visit the Kendrick Park playground, eight parking spaces on the reconfigured one-way section of North Pleasant Street would no longer be available for those with downtown parking permits.
The Transportation and Parking Commission, at its Oct. 21 meeting, voted 8-1 to advise the Town Council to support a change in how these spaces along “Old North Pleasant” in the northern part of downtown are administered.
Currently, the 24 non-handicapped spaces along the stretch are either pay-by-space or permit parking. But this means during the academic year those with permit parking stickers often end up parking their cars there around the clock, especially on weekdays.
What the commission has found, said District 3 Councilor George Ryan, is that this limits where families who want to bring children to the playground can park.
The commission is advising the Town Council to make the change when the application process for residential parking permits is underway, so as to not affect those who have been using those spaces this semester.
Department of Public Works Superintendent Guilford Mooring said while there have been challenges for families in finding parking, since Garcia’s restaurant, at 51 East Pleasant St. and on the opposite side of Kendrick Park closed in late summer, there has been some relief. That vacant lot is being used by some families.
The north end of downtown already has limited parking, with most of the public parking closer to the middle of downtown and nearer the Town Common, including the Spring Street lot, the Amity Street lot, the Boltwood parking garage and the town lot between North Pleasant and North Prospect streets.
Police Chief Gabriel Ting said he would recommend removing the 24 permit parking spaces entirely because many local college students may be leaving their vehicles there for extended times, taking advantage of the PVTA and UMass Transit buses to get around on campus.
Commission member Kimberly Tremblay said her concern is this will put more vehicles on McClellan Street, creating a hazard there, both during the fall and spring, but even moreso in the winter when the street is extremely narrow.
Tremblay said all of these problems stem from only a handful of parking spaces being available for tenants at Kendrick, One East Pleasant and 11 East Pleasant mixed-use buildings that have opened since 2015.
Kendrick Park recently got a new amenity with the opening of the Portland Loo bathroom, which, when it is operating, will be available to the public 24 hours a day. Town Manager Paul Bockelman said the facility will be cleaned daily and can be locked remotely if problems develop.
Meanwhile, the commission is determining whether to provide an advisory on a state Department of Transportation recommendation that stop signs be installed on Bay Road at the intersection with South East Street and Canterbury Lane, creating a four-way stop.
Mooring said the state agency is examining rural roads, leading to a solar speed board on Leverett Road in North Amherst, and has suggested the added stop signs would improve Bay Road in South Amherst.
Mooring said the town fields complaints from Canterbury Lane residents, who sometimes have challenges entering Bay Road. But he said would prefer to build a roundabout on the main commuter route between Northampton and Belchertown. Bay Road has a roundabout with West Street at Atkins Corner.
Ting said there have been six crashes at Bay Road and South East Street in the past six years, though mostly minor and some attributable to bad weather. Much of the concerns police get, he said, center on the hill on Bay Road that often becomes a challenge during snow and ice storms.
