Township landowner and InterCap Holdings CEO Steve Goldin took parking matters into his own hands earlier this month when he released a study looking at the cost of constructing a 1,”000-space parking garage in the Princeton Junction train station area performed by an engineering firm he hired.##M:[more]##
The study, released December 3, came just a week before the joint Parking Authority and Township Council meeting (see story, above). Still, Parking Authority Chairman Any Lupo, during that meeting, said that the authority would conduct its own studies.
In the study, engineering and architectural firm Tim Haas and Associates estimated that building a 1,”000-space parking garage — which would only serve monthly parkers — may cost as much as $29.2 million. The firm estimated that it would cost about $25,”000 to construct each individual parking space, another $400,”000 for access equipment, and 15 percent to allow for soft costs.
In addition to annual operating expenses, the study’s authors also recommended setting aside $50 per space per year (or $50,”000 annually with a yearly increase of 3 percent to compensate for inflation) in a structural maintenance reserve fund.
In order to fund the garage, the firm suggested raising monthly parking permit rates to $100, which would still leave $19.5 million needed “to reduce the debt service and allow the parking facility to be financially self-sufficient.”
“While we understand the necessity to subsidize these types of facilities, we also believe in the need to balance the costs between the public entities and the users,” the study stated.
However, if the township desired a completely self-sufficient parking facility, it would be necessary to charge the monthly users $210 per moth, or $2,”520 per year, the study suggested. “While there is a current waiting list for many parking facilities in the area, we feel that the drastic increase of a monthly rate of $210 would outweigh the benefit of mass transit to many riders and result in a lower occupancy of the proposed garage,” the study stated.
During the joint meeting, however, residents urged officials to move forward with a tax neutral solution, and council members emphasized they were looking to do so.
Goldin, whose company owns 170,”000 square feet of office space on 25 acres on Washington Road adjacent to the station, said in October he would proceed with a series of initiatives to educate West Windsor residents about transit-oriented developments and to elicit views about what they would like to see in their town center. That included the financial study of the costs of a parking deck, and a study of school children demographics within transit villages served by high achieving school districts such as West Windsor-Plainsboro.
