Permit program gives more parking options
Greenwich soon to offer permits to downtown residents
GREENWICH — The town of Greenwich is officially starting a parking permit program for residents who live downtown, following a vote of approval Thursday from the Board of Selectmen.
The program will be limited to 100 permits, according to Deputy Police Chief Mark Marino, who heads the town’s Parking Services Department. If more than 100 residents apply, a lottery will be held for the permits.
With the board’s approval in place, “the real work begins,” Marino said after the meeting.
Parking Services will work out the details in the next week or two, he said, and then make an announcement on who is eligible for a permit and how to apply for one.
Marino said he was “optimistic” that permits could be valid for use starting April 1.
The permits will cost $720 a year and will not renew automatically. The plan is to hold a lottery next year, if the program continues, he said. If the program proves popular, that would prevent the same residents from rolling the permits over from year to year.
The permits would allow residents to park their cars in designated 12-hour parking
spots, freeing up the twohour spots for those drivers coming downtown to shop or eat, he said.
But the approval was not unanimous. Selectperson Jill Oberlander voted against the plan, saying it could have unintended consequences.
“It seems to me that the residents who might apply for this permit are already able to park in those 12hour lots and can facilitate that by using the online app,” Oberlander said. “It seems that consumers and other residents coming into the downtown area won’t know whether all of the spots in one lot are being held up by these resident permits or not. I’m still a little uncomfortable with it.”
But Oberlander also said the Parking Services
Department face “an impossible challenge” with satisfying all the requests it receives.
First Selectman Fred Camillo and Selectwoman Lauren Rabin voted in favor of the program.
Rabin said the Reimagine Greenwich Committee, a group she oversees that is looking to improve the downtown area, has discussed parking issues. When Marino presented the plan to the group earlier this week, no objections were raised.
Marino said the program would not bring an influx of new drivers seeking to park downtown.
“I really don’t think this program is going to have a negative impact on the volume of cars,” he said. “I don’t think it will exceed the capacity of the parking lots. The people we are targeting for these kinds of permits are already parking in these
parking lots or in the downtown area. I don’t see this being an influx of new parkers that will have an impact on the capacity of parking lots.”
Downtown residents had demanded a parking program, due partially to the increased need for parking during the day because more people are working from home due to
the coronavirus pandemic and not moving their cars to their workplaces.
With the permits, downtown residents would not need to feed parking meters all day or constantly move their cars.
“People have been spending more time at home, and we’ve seen a lot of different changes,” Marino said when the Board
of Selectmen considered the program last month. “There’s definitely been change in the parking trend that we’ve noticed. With people working from home and hybrid schedules and not really driving their cars as often as they normally would, what we thought we would do is look at a permit program for residents that live in
the downtown section of Greenwich that are really regulated by parking meters during the day.”
The program was first presented to the Board of Selectmen in December. A vote was delayed until Thursday to allow time for any public objection, of which there was none.