The Town of Hanover is looking into the possibility of building a parking garage with about 250 parking spaces to help alleviate the problem of parking in downtown Hanover.
The town has been thinking about building a parking garage for five or six years, according to Marilyn "Willie" Black, head of the Hanover board of selectmen. She said there is "no question" that Hanover does "have a problem with parking."
Although Town Manager Cliff Vermilya said there is "a general agreement towards building some sort of parking structure," he warned that plans for the garage are still "very preliminary."
Black said the town is currently trying to purchase a small piece of land from Shawmut Bank. Vermilya said the piece of land is on East South Street, diagonally across from the Howe Library.
The lot would provide an additional 30 spaces as well as an entrance to the proposed parking garage. Currently there are 900 metered spaces in town, but downtown merchants still feel the need for more spots, Vermilya said.
The garage could provide up to an additional 250 spaces. The cost of parking in the proposed garage has not been determined, Black said.
Black said plans for a garage cannot go forward until the land is purchased.
The garage would attempt to solve the lack of enough short-term parking in town. Black said "as long as employees park in front of where they work, there will not be room for customers."
The cost of building the garage was appraised years ago at $3.5 to $4 million, Vermilya said. Currently, Vermilya said Hanover Parking Operations earns $443,000 a year --$268,000 from parking and $175,000 from fines.
But Parking Operations still runs a deficit, he said. Black said this deficit comes from the costs of a shuttle the town runs between the College, the town, the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and Thompson Arena.
The town decided to start the shuttle so people could park outside of the central business district, particularly at Thompson Arena, and ride the shuttle to work. But Black said this shuttle costs a lot to run and is not used by enough people.Black says the shuttle was created to free up parking spaces --much like the parking garage would be.
