The Freemans Journal - Cooperstowns Newspaper Since 1808: Editorial

The Freeman's Journal - Cooperstown's Newspaper Snce 1808

Saturday, July 5, 2008

EDITORIAL

Doubleday Field Parking Lot Is Cooperstown’s Best-Kept Secret

Why is the Doubleday Field Parking Lot so often so empty these days? Previously, it didn’t really matter. Now, however, no cars mean no revenue. Think about it. At $2 an hour, if 10 spaces are open 10 hours a day, that’s $200 lost. If 50 spaces are open 10 hours a day, that’s $1,000.
Between the day this edition is published – July 11 – and Sept. 1, when paid parking ends for the season, there are 52 days. That’s $52,000.
Let’s say 100 spaces are open six hours a day ... well, you get the idea.
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It was just like Yoga Berra would have said it at the village trustees’ Parking Committee
Tuesday, July 8. Legends of Baseball’s Jeff Foster was there, and Robin Gray from Essential Elements, joined by 2 Chestnut B&B’s Doug Walker, The Tunnicliff’s Frank Leo, Helmut Michelitsch from Metro Cleaners and more.
No one ever thought the local law enabling paid-parking in the Doubleday lot would end the debate, and so it was. Read on:
• Michelitsch said long-time customers can’t find a place to park in front of his laundry, which fronts on the parking lot, don’t want to pay the $2 per hour, or don’t want to haul their dirty laundry two or three blocks. The result: Business is down.
• Pat Narcisso of Cooperstown Batting Cages reports teams saying on returning to play at Doubleday Field: “They raised the price of the field” – from $400 to $600. “Now they want us to pay for parking.” Plus, 20-30 spaces are open all the time. The result: Business is down.
• Said Robin Gray, “Nobody knows it’s paid parking.”
• Said Foster, “The perception of the (trustees) is that they’ve already made their decision and there’s nothing we can do to sway the board’s mind.” He added, “You might be making money this year. But in the long run, you’re taking it from the businesses.”
•
But whatever the over-arching issues, the village is determined to make money off parking, so it should make as much money as efficiently as possible. That’s not happening now.
The previous Sunday, people were queued up all afternoon, waiting to use the Pay & Display
machine at the Main Street end of the lot, Parking Enforcement
Officer Thomas “Stretch” Redding reported to the committee.
The instructions are clear, he said, but people didn’t want to make the intellectual investment
to figure it out. (After all, they ARE on vacation.) So Redding spent the afternoon next to the machine giving instructions.
Further, Parking Enforcement Officer Mike DeSimone reported, that particular machine
wasn’t accepting dollar bills or credit cards. A new control board was en route from Mackay Meters in the Maritimes; meanwhile, Michelitsch reported, folks were cleaning out his laundromat’s change machine.
Finally, Police Chief Diana Nicols reported 270 parking tickets, $35 each, were issued in the Doubleday lot the last 10 days of July – the first 10 days the P&D machines were being enforced.
That’s 270 visitors leaving town with bad tastes in their mouth, 540 if you include their wives, 1,080 if you add in the two kids. If it continues at that rate, in the average summer – June 1 to Sept. 1, or 82 days – we might succeed in antagonizing 8,856 folks a summer. Over a century ... well, you get the idea.
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By July 6, total parking revenues were edging toward $20,000, which would cover the initial installation of the two machines, so at least the village is breaking even, (plus the parking-ticket revenues.)
Nicols had DeSimone conduct a 10-question survey, and he approached 34 people at random. The results were mixed, but only one person objected to the $2 per hour fee. Price doesn’t seem to be a hurdle.
The committee – even chairman Lynn Mebust and trustee Neil Weiller – seemed to agree it doesn’t make sense to make adjustments willy-nilly. Data is being collected and, as agreed upon, the trustees will revisit the whole matter in September.
But what about now? Time’s a’wasting and money’s a’being lost.
What’s lacking is promotion, and that can be addressed today, or tomorrow.
All we locals know there’s parking in the Doubleday Field lot, but first-time visitors don’t.
The signage is inadequate. There’s no advertising – say, fliers in the Hartwick Seminary and Oneonta hotels, billboards, maybe even an ad on www.thefreemansjournal.com (what a concept!) – of convenient parking just a few steps from downtown and the Hall of Fame.
We have a better mousetrap, but the world isn’t beating a path to the door of the Doubleday
Field lot. It’s the oldest marketing truism.
Promote – and fill the lot.

Labels: 07-11-08, Editorial, Opinion

posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 7:06 AM

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