Parking in Asbury Park stinks. This plan should help, town says.

Asbury Park’s resurgence as a popular place to live, visit, and do business has created a growing parking crunch that’s become all too obvious for the very people doing those things and for city officials elected and hired to do something about it.

So, amid the Shore resort’s cold-weather lull, officials are implementing plans to address the Asbury parking problem in a couple of ways: by moving to increase the supply of spaces by constructing a 500-space parking deck on Main Street projected for completion in 2021; and, in the meantime, by encouraging turnover of existing spots by expanding metered and permit parking to include several blocks that up to now have been almost entirely unregulated.

In addition, the entire peak parking season, when rates are higher than off-peak, is being extended by a total of two months, with the start of the season now beginning a month earlier, on April 15, and ending a month later, on Oct. 16. That means peak rates of up to $2 an hour depending on their location and the day of the week will be effect for those additional two months, as opposed to off-peak rates as low as 50 cents an hour.

“Obviously, the city recognizes that the city has parking challenges, for sure,” Michael Manzella, Asbury Park’s director of transportation, said in an interview. “It’s not about revenue. It’s about increasing availability, primarily for residents, and also for visitors.”

While the new rules were officially effective as of Jan. 1, Manzella noted that meters have not yet been installed on the new blocks involved. Therefore, practically speaking, he said the new requirement to feed the meters will not take effect until they are, which he said would be sometime in April.

One relaxation of the city’s parking rules is the elimination of a mid-winter peak parking season traditionally intended to address increased demand for holiday shopping and dining. Now, the entire period between Oct. 17 and April 14 will be off-peak.

The new rules, which were adopted by the council on Nov. 26, are focused on several streets at the city’s southern end, and mainly extend the location of parking meters a block farther west from the waterfront. However, the amount of time people can park at new and old metered spaces will remain unchanged.

The new rules also expand the areas where parking is permitted for residents only, including a single uptown block of 8th Avenue between Grand and Park avenues, and one downtown block of Monroe Avenue between Grand and Emory avenues.

The intent of spreading metered and permit parking, Manzella said, is to discourage abuse of unregulated spaces by people who leave their cars in place sometimes for days on end, moving them only for alternate-side-of-the-street rules that facilitate curbside trash collection. Those people, he said, take spaces that might otherwise be used by people for shorter but more productive time shopping, dining, or doing business.

“We have a lot of unregulated parking on our streets in our city and the only way to increase parking availability without building additional supply is to regulate that parking, because everything that’s free gets abused,” Manzella said. “And there’s really no such thing as ‘free.’ Somebody always ends up paying for it one way or another.”

Residents will still be able buy annual parking permits for $90, and now will have a better chance of finding a space near their home, he said.

Quarterly permits will be available to people who work in the city at a cost of $40 for a 5-day-a-week permit or $60 for all seven days.

The parking deck is projected for completion in 2021, hopefully in time for at least part of that summer season, Manzella said.

While the deck’s planned location at what is now a 40-space surface lot in the municipal complex is six blocks from the beach, Manzella said it would still serve the teaming waterfront by drawing motorists willing to make the modest walk in exchange for readily available spaces. People who park in the deck could also take advantage of public or private jitneys, bikes and scooters, or other forms of transportation to get to the beach or other parts of town. And the lot would serve commuters and the city’s general population by providing parking for the nearby train station.

Manzella said the precise height, appearance and cost of the six-story deck should be finalized by this summer, when construction lasting 12-18 months is expected to begin. He put the cost at more than $10 million, financed by bonds that would be repaid by the deck’s own revenues, which would generated by daily metered parking and permits.

Another way the city has tried to curb the parking crunch is through its Bike Share program and a wildly popular e-scooter program that began in August, which allows residents and visitors to move around the city without having to occupy a new space at each destination.

Parking is not a big problem for Asbury Park in wintertime. So it was hardly surprising that, despite the magnitude of the problem in summertime, few members of the public addressed the issue when the council voted to amend the city’s parking ordinance to include the rule changes in November. One resident on hand did sum up the situation, however.

“It’s getting crazy,” Kerry Butch, a local activist, said of the parking situation.

While several of the newly metered blocks are in the vicinity of the city’s Cookman Avenue restaurant and shopping district, Manzella later said that the new rules had not been opposed by the local business community. Rather, he said, businesses understood the benefits of freeing up parking spaces by encouraging turnover through metering.

The executive director of the Asbury Park Chamber of Commerce, Sylvia Sylvia-Cioffi, said in brief phone interview that the chamber did not have a position on the meters.

Blocks where metering took effect on Jan. 1 are:

• Asbury Avenue from Ocean Avenue to Grand Street.
• First Avenue, from Ocean to Grand.
• Third Avenue, from Ocean to Grand.
• Heck Street, from Sewall to First Avenue
• Emory Street, from Monroe to Lake Avenue,
• Bergh Street, from Asbury to Fifth Avenue.

Steve Strunsky may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips.