Maplewood City Manager Marty Corcoran proposed Tuesday night at the city council meeting that several parking spaces on Burgess Avenue be reserved for residents only, in response to several complaints from residents of Burgess.
Corcoran told the council, “There are a couple of residents there [Burgess Ave.] that do not have driveways, and they’ve become fed up with school parents leaving them no place to park.”
In response to the complaints, Corcoran initially inspected the school to see if there was, in fact, adequate parking for parents picking up their children and stated both times he visited there were at least thirty spaces left unused while the parents opted to park on Burgess Avenue instead to avoid the line. “The only solution we can think of is to create resident-only parking within certain periods of time,” Corcoran said.
Mayor Barry Greenberg suggested an alternate plan in response, proposing only the residents without driveways be given two reserved parking spots each. This is how the council solved two similar problems in the past on Marietta and Hazel. This solution was successful in those cases. “My preference would be to handle it the same way we did with Marietta and Hazel,” Greenberg said.
The council has agreed to discuss the issue further and think of a solution before voting on the issue on December 11, the date of the next council meeting.
It makes complete sense to make the accommodation for homes lacking off-street parking, especially since there is precedent for it on several streets. Although the school is involved in the problem, they don’t have the power to make people not park on a public street. I wonder how much traffic would be affected if the ECC ended car drop-off for K-2, thus making the school bus mandatory except for preschool and special cases. Or would adding a bus route for preschool help? I used to park in the neighborhood (on Comfort or Laclede, sometimes Burgess) and walk my preschooler to class because we enjoyed it and I saw the teacher every day. The drop-off line for cars is madness in the morning, and I have seen many parents park illegally on Burgess because they think they’re special. Like many schools in older neighborhoods, the area lacks the infrastructure to handle all that auto traffic, and I’d hate to see school-owned buildings torn down to make huge traffic lanes that are used twice a day. Please, just ride the bus!
I live on Burgess and would prefer “resident only” parking on our street. The superintendent assured me that there would be no more traffic on Burgess when construction was completed (at a cost of $1.7 million for just the parking lot). She said everyone would take Manchester-Laclede Station-Burgess to the new lot. This is not what happens in the am, noon and after school pick up. Parents park illegally, block driveways, some even block the crosswalk. There are not enough spaces in the lot to accommodate the number of kids being dropped off. If there is an after school/evening event it is even worse. Some residents can’t park anywhere near their homes and forget about having any company coming over, there is no where to park. When a few teachers and after school workers decide to take up street parking, there isn’t anywhere to park for residents. I called the principal of the ECC, she told me it was a public street and they weren’t doing anything illegal. I said that most businesses have adequate parking for their employees. Traffic also backs up and comes to a dead stop most days, I have sat for 15 minutes at a time trying to get to Laclede Station Road. They do have a solution.. they already own 3 houses (sitting empty) and could buy 1 more to build another parking lot. That would solve the parking/traffic problems!!!
At this time, i don’t like parking in the parking lot because you never know when the road construction on Laclede Station will leave the school parking lot blocked. What about imposing limits on when the road construction can happen also? I have sympathy for the residents of Burgess. They have to deal with a lot of crazy traffic. Unfortunately so do the parents dropping their kids off.