Compromise on Basie Parking Pitfalls?

By Elaine Van Develde

It's another parking predicament in Red Bank that may soon see some sort of partial resolution.

If you're trying to visit borough offices, particularly going to an early evening meeting, you've probably run into a problem parking in the borough lot. It's something that people have complained about persistently.

The problem: the Count Basie Theatre, across the street from the municipal complex, is often running a show around the same time meetings take place and, despite signage and cones blocking the entrance, theater patrons bust through and park in the lot.

As a result, the municipal lot is loaded, leaving no parking spaces open for those attending a meeting or conducting borough and/or police business.

It could cause you to miss a meeting while the show across the street goes on.

Patch caught up with Mayor Pat Menna and Count Basie Theatre CEO Adam Philipson recently at an event, and the mayor offered some compromises to Philipson on the spot that he said will warrant further airing and discussion.

"It's been a consistent complaint at meetings," Menna said. "The patrons of the theater use the municipal lot, regardless of the postings, to park, which poses a problem, especially when people want to get to a meeting and the spaces are all filled."

Philipson, said that while he realizes traffic can get jammed up in front of the theater around show times, he didn't know that patrons had been helping themselves so much to the cordoned-off "municipal parking only" lot or that it was a problem.

Menna offered a suggestion or two that he cautioned are not yet ironclad answers, only suggestions.

One suggestion, Menna said, was perhaps putting a parking kiosk by 40 employee parking spots to only be used at night, with the exception of meeting nights, when they are not there. Or, Philipson said, an alternative could be to work out some sort of patron permitting for the spots for specific shows at specific times when the 40 spots are not needed by the borough as sort of a theater package.

On the Basie's website, the parking situation is explained as "problematic" and patrons are directed to arrive an hour early to find appropriate spots in the metered municipal lot — not the Borough Hall and police lot discussed — in between Monmouth and White streets and Maple Avenue. Red Bank Train Station parking, free after 11 a.m., is also offered as an alternative.

A map is also provided on the site.

As for the 40 negotiable Borough Hall spots, "the matter really needs to first be looked into more," Menna reiterated.

The two said they planned to meet to continue discussions on the matter toward a mutually beneficial solution.