By Cristina Kumka
Staff Writer
Posted April 4, 2008

One by one entrepreneurs are asking the city’s Planning Board if they can establish their businesses downtown.

And one by one, they are asking to be the exception to a city law that prohibits stores and restaurants to set up shop if there isn’t enough parking for customers.

Many of the applicants who come before the Planning Board are getting their businesses approved without meeting their parking requirements, board members and the city’s planner said last night.

Last night, city Engineer and Planner Ken Albert objected to a proposed building plan for a new 44-seat restaurant because he believed the applicant didn’t prove there was enough parking.

Albert said a flawed approval process by the Planning Board may be compounding a growing parking problem on Palisade Avenue and other busy city streets.

He proposed that the Planning Board ask applicants for more before granting them parking waivers — to prove that their business will have a positive effect downtown.

For more on last night’s Planning Board meeting, see the April 9 issue of the Suburbanite.