Business Owners: Free Parking Would Rejuvenate Toms River's Downtown

Downtown Toms River is dying, business owners say, and some have started lobbying the township council to get rid of parking meters in the area.

"If you look, most of the businesses downtown don’t stay there for more than a year," Michael Schwartz, who runs a consulting company, told members of the township council at their April 8 meeting. "In Point Pleasant [Beach], they have no meters, three hour parking limits and it’s really a bustling metropolis. We’re a ghost town."

Jennifer Barna, owner of The Red Car, told the council at the same meeting that she's gotten tickets after her car was parked at a meter that had been expired for just a few minutes. The heavy enforcement, and the presence of the meters as a whole, dissuades business owners as well as customers from shopping downtown, she said.

"You can’t just lock your business up and leave," to pay a meter, she said. "We don’t work a normal Monday through Friday, nine to five. We work weekends, we work nights, and I just don’t want to walk blocks down dark streets to the county parking garage. I’m not going to put myself in the position to be mugged, raped or murdered. You say, ‘some day, when the business has more money, we’ll go somewhere else.'"

Members of the council had mixed reactions to the pleadings of the business owners. Council President Maria Maruca questioned whether getting rid of the meters would solve any of the issues at play in the area.

"If we had the all the employees of the businesses parking there, would that encourage business?" she asked.

"I don’t understand how that will increase the traffic downtown if you allow people to park for eight hours?" asked Councilman George Wittmann, though Schwartz's initial request to the governing body included a proposal to maintain some sort of time limitation.

"We understand the situation," said Councilman Jeffrey Carr. "It’s not that we’re blind to this, and it’s not that we haven’t looked at it. The Point Pleasant downtown area is different than the Toms River area. I’m not sure if you can attribute that totally to the parking issue."

Carr said the township has a firm studying the downtown area and will issue a report in the next 18 months.

"It’s going to be based on data, based on the past 18 months," said Business Administrator Paul Shives. "The idea is to try to give the parking authority and the governing body some hard data on, ‘here are the conditions today.’"

The parking issue is not a new one when it comes to the downtown area.

"When I was mayor in 1993, I had proposed what was dubbed the ‘de-meterization’ of downtown Toms River," said former mayor – and current township clerk – Mark Mutter. "It was vehemently opposed by the merchants in downtown Toms River who insisted the meters be present so there could be a turnover."