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Business & Developmentby Fern Shen12:48 pmFeb 6, 20150

Parking lanes the only way to meet stormwater requirements, JHU says

Some applaud a plan that slows traffic and promotes biking, but others see parking misery in a growing neighborhood

Above: Johns Hopkins vice president Alan Fish discusses the university’s plans for Wyman Park Drive.

The Johns Hopkins University official who came to last night’s meeting with local residents led with the apology.

“We obviously haven’t had a thorough dialogue with you. We acknowledge that,” said Alan R. Fish, vice president for facilities management and real estate.

Fish also came with an offer of three things Hopkins could do to mitigate the loss of 30 parking spaces on Wyman Park Drive, an element of the university’s $15 million San Martin Drive project that angers some nearby residents, who believe it will exacerbate their parking woes and was quietly blessed by city officials.

Still, in the end, Fish and the other Hopkins representatives told the crowd of nearly 50 people gathered at the Greenmount School that the university needs to narrow the public roadway to comply with stormwater mitigation requirements and that eliminating the two parking lanes is the only way to do it.

“There just weren’t a lot of other options,” said Fish, noting that much of the land in the project area, along shady, winding San Martin Drive, is “a forest conservation area” or too steeply sloped.

Funded primarily through gifts, the project will make the city-owned street more bike and pedestrian-friendly, he said, with a continuous sidewalk and a new pedestrian bridge. It is also meant to beautify the school’s “backdoor,” adding brick entrance gates at Wyman and Remington, and at San Martin Drive and University Parkway.

Not Part of the Plan

A skeptical Gabriel Goodenough, executive director of the Wyman Park South Community Association, asked Fish why other parts of the Hopkins Homewood campus couldn’t have been used to meet the stormwater requirements.

“Hopkins has endless amounts of impermeable surface,” Goodenough said. (His community association includes homes on the 300 block of Wyman Park Drive and the 3100 block of Remington Avenue.)

He also asked why stormwater mitigation couldn’t come out of the footprint of the daycare center project being erected on what’s currently a parking lot on one side of a segment of Wyman Park Drive, between Remington Avenue and San Martin Drive.

The crowd at a public meeting about JHU's proposed removal of 30 street parking spaces. (Photo by Fern Shen)

The crowd at a public meeting about JHU’s proposed removal of 30 street parking spaces. (Photo by Fern Shen)

Neither of those approaches would work, Fish told him, explaining that the San Martin project is standalone, and not part of the campus-wide Stormwater Management Plan, where other mitigation projects are already long established.

The Early Learning Center, he said, is also a separate project.

(Fish said that the child care facility will be a single modular structure and not multiple trailer-like buildings, telling The Brew this “mis-impression” is due to what he characterized as reported “errors we have tried to get corrected.” He said the child care center is also not “temporary,” as it was earlier described, noting that the type of pre-fabricated structure being used “typically lasts 10 to 20 years” and that future plans for campus facilities are still being determined.)

Goodenough asked Fish if the Wyman Park Drive changes aren’t “more about looks” than stormwater.

“We’re greening up the area and meeting the requirements of the stormwater restrictions,” Fish said. “We want to create a great amenity for people to bike and walk and drive.”

Parking Pressure High

How much would the loss of parking on the disputed segment of Wyman Park Drive hurt residents of nearby Remington Avenue and elsewhere in this North Baltimore neighborhood?

Not much, according to Melissa Krafchik, a planner with the Parking Authority of Baltimore City. “We gave them our okay.”

Krafchik sad the authority went to look at the spot “at midnight. . . and only seven cars were parked there and there was ample opportunity to use Remington Avenue.”

Many residents at the meeting begged to differ. A woman who said she has lived on West 31st Street for decades said parking has become much more scarce in recent years. In trying to park on her street in the afternoon, “I cannot get a parking spot. Things have changed dramatically.”

Taking 30 spots away, she said, would push more construction workers, Hopkins students, employees and others into residential streets. “I’m telling you students park in front of my home,” she said, vowing to film them.

To compensate the neighborhood for the loss, Fish said, the university could make the 42 parking spaces planned at the childcare center available to residents in the evening and on weekends.

Hopkins could also support the establishment of a Residential Permit Parking (RPP) zone on Remington Avenue, south of Wyman Park Drive, to the 31st Street intersection. They could also stop their construction crews from using contractor passes and bring them by shuttle to campus job sites, he said.

Some residents said these options had limited value because the 42 spots would not be available during the day and the city fails to enforce the RPP areas already established in the neighborhood.

“I live on a street that is RPP and there is no enforcement after noon,” one woman said. Department of Transportation employees, she said, have told her they have to go to work at the city impound lot at that hour. DOT senior advisor Frank Murphy, who hosted the meeting, took her name and promised to follow up.

Bike Advocates Cheer

Not all the residents at the meeting opposed Hopkins’ plans for Wyman Park Drive. A contingent of bicycle advocates, some of whom live in Remington, loudly applauded the elimination of parking on the street, saying the narrowed roadway would slow traffic and make the spot safer for pedestrians and bike riders.

“It’s a fantastic plan and I applaud Hopkins and the city for working on it,” said Jed  Weeks, a Remington resident who is also board president of the advocacy group Bikemore.

One bike rider said traffic on that part of Wyman Park Drive currently makes it a “very hazardous” spot for bike riders.

Gabriel Godenough, of the Wyman Park South Community Association, turns to address others i the audience. (Photo by Fern Shen)

Gabriel Goodenough, of the Wyman Park South Community Association, turns to address others in the audience. (Photo by Fern Shen)

There were heated exchanges between Weeks and fellow bike advocates on the one hand and Goodenough and fellow residents on the other.

“How is a wider sidewalk and no parking making it safer for bikers?” asked Goodenough, who said he is a bike rider and former bike messenger. “That is in no way a bike lane!”

Weeks said he talking with the project engineer about additions to the plans, such as a climbing lane for bikes. Simply by slowing traffic, the narrower street would help bike riders, he added.

Go Work it Out

At the end of the meeting, after listening to the various speakers, Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke stated her position clearly. “I think we should keep the free parking the way it’s been and ask Hopkins to work around it.” But it was not clear how far she would go to push it.

Clarke just went through a bruising battle in Hampden over the creation of a RPP zone for residents near the Rotunda development. Other new projects, like Seawall Development’s Remington Row, may be adding more cars to this part of North Baltimore, observed some speakers.

On Charles Street, below University Parkway, about 65 currently free parking places are about to become metered spots this spring, noted Joan Floyd, president of the Remington Neighborhood Alliance, saying the loss of 30 spots on Wyman Park Drive is part of a trend.

“This is about the removal of free public spaces,” Floyd said.

That prospect delighted one camp at the meeting and alarmed the other. Clarke ended the evening by essentially telling the groups to work together.

That sendoff disappointed area residents Rick Shelley and Ed Schneider, who were hoping city or Hopkins officials could devise a solution that satisfies all parties but allows the parking to remain.

“We’re not engineers, we’re not experts,” Shelley said, “but they’re basically putting it on us.”

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