Developer wants to add parking at Secaucus Junction train station

[Trainspotter]

Developer wants to add parking at Secaucus Junction train station

by Tom Feeney/The Star-Ledger

Wednesday December 12, 2007, 6:48 PM

 

[float=right][/float]Commuter parking could arrive at the Secaucus Junction train station years before the area around it is developed.

 

Edison Properties wants to build a temporary 1,100-space parking lot on a parcel it owns near Secaucus Junction, the only major station in the NJ Transit system without local parking. The Newark-based company filed a plan for the lot with the Meadowlands Commission on Nov. 30.

 

When NJ Transit built the station at a cost of more than $600 million, no parking spaces were included. The facility was viewed as a junction rather than a park-and-ride - a place where riders on the Pascack Valley and Main/Bergen lines could transfer onto trains to Manhattan.

 

Officials now say it was a mistake to build the station without parking facilities, and the long-term development plans for the site include a lot or garage.

 

"It will be a long time before you will see any real construction at the train station," said Edison Chairman Jerry Gottesman, whose company owns parking lots in Newark, New York and Baltimore. "We think this is a viable short-term alternative."

 

Many environmentalists and mass transit advocates continue to oppose parking at the site, but the Corzine administration is in favor of it.

 

If the Meadowlands Commission approves Edison's plan, the company would spend $5 million to raze a vacant warehouse on a 6.8-acre lot near the station, to improve drainage and to install lighting, fencing and utilities.