Two business owners raised the questions and concern about the availability of of downtown parking during Monday’s regular, public meeting of City Council.

Ralph Bahram, owner of Rahway Fried Chicken at Main and East Cherry streets, remembers parking being plentiful when he first opened in 2012 but now he finds cars parked in crosswalks and in yellow zones.

“It’s a good problem to have because it means people are coming downtown, spending money,” said Bahram, who has since expanded his business three times. But with several development projects under construction or in the works, he asked City Council what the city is doing to address parking and whether another parking deck is being considered since that would take several years to complete.

Parking is always an important issue, City Administrator Cherron Rountree said, and while there are no immediate plans for another deck, the city is always looking at additional options to address parking. Unfortunately, one of the problems is an aversion to using the parking deck on Lewis Street, she said, and people tend to want to parking on the street. During construction on the former Lot B, where the 208-unit Main & Monroe project will be built, the Parking Authority is offering free, two-hour parking in the deck on nights and weekends.

Taste of Marina’s has been on East Cherry Street for two years and owner Debbie Stapleton told the governing body that she’s had problems with employees getting tickets and has no rear access anymore because of construction activity. That’s impacted deliveries and maintenance for her business as well as customers picking up food orders also getting parking tickets. East Cherry is a small street so there’s limited parking, Rountree said, but she’s open to a discussion to find some options.

The six-story, 524-space Lewis Street parking deck is 13 years old, completed in December 2004 at a cost of $11 million, with $3 million being paid back to NJ Transit.

The previous iteration of the Main & Monroe project (which had been dubbed The Westbury) proposed a four-story parking deck along with 152 units but those plans were scrapped amid the housing crisis in 2009. That same year, city officials mulled the idea of a privately-built parking deck but discussions never materialized into any concrete plans.

The issue of planning for parking has come up on occasion in recent years, including a discussion among the Redevelopment Agency commissioners in 2015.

As hard as it may be to believe, a 2009 parking assessment forecast parking needs over the next decade and we’re almost at that point. The report took into account 455 future/planned residential units, with 252 parking spaces and although it cited a few developments that didn’t pan out, the total units actually constructed downtown have almost matched that figure in the past five years.

Since 2013, about 390 units have been built in and around downtown. Between The Willows opening last month and The Gramercy to be completed this year, another 103 units will have been constructed and operational in 2018. Those figures don’t include older projects like the 159-unit Park Square (completed in 2009 and 2011), 222-unit Carriage City Plaza (2009) or 136-unit River Place (2003).