City reports beach parking kiosk revenue

Sep. 12—PLATTSBURGH — The Plattsburgh City Beach officially closed Sept. 5, marking the end of a season that brought many changes to the local summer destination — beginning with the introduction of paid parking kiosks.

Through the new kiosk-based parking system, visitors who parked in the beach's parking lot this summer — excluding 613 town and city residents who had free seasonal beach passes — had to pay a daily fee.

For non-local visitors, the city also offered the option of a seasonal beach permit, of which they sold 21 and generated $1,260 from.

The four parking kiosks, in total, had cost the city approximately $47,000 to install, and in just one season of operation, the kiosks paid for themselves by generating $76,806 in revenue from the parking fees.

As the Falcon Seaboard Agreement is set to expire Dec. 1, next summer's generated revenue from the kiosks will likely increase even further as the discussion for potentially charging town and city residents gains steam.

City of Plattsburgh Mayor Chris Rosenquest said those figures are what they expected.

"We projected it out that it was going to pay beyond what it costs for the kiosks themselves, so that's obviously good...it is nice to see that that money comes back to the city and it's not wasted," he said.

"It's also one thing to consider, before when we charged for beach entry or for parking entry, we had to pay an employee to do it, somebody who was sitting at the beach and at the gate collecting money, where (now) we don't have to do that anymore. That's done with the technology and we use that person, rather than sitting at the gate, we use that person for lifeguard duties."

With the beach now closed for the season, access remains open to the public and the parking kiosks will display a "FREE PARKING" message until they are powered down for the winter.

Additionally, lifeguards will not be on duty and beach amenities such as washroom facilities are closed, but port-a-johns will still be available until Sept. 30.

CANADIAN RETURN

This beach season also saw the much-anticipated return of our Canadian neighbors.

Rosenquest said their increased presence has helped rejuvenate the beach again.

"Specific to visitors, we did not see hardly any Canadian travelers last year considering the border closure," he said.

"This year, as we've seen in the past, we've seen more Canadian license plates in the parking lot than we had seen. We know that that's trickling in slowly. We've seen that not only at the city beach but downtown and uptown, boats being returned back to the water, we're seeing people return to the City of Plattsburgh and that's good. We know that the beach is heavily used by Canadian travelers and so...we're certainly hopeful, looking at next year, (we'll see) an additional increase in Canadian travelers."

2023 SEASON

Looking ahead to next summer, the Sunrise Rotary Club also has gifted the beach two beach wheelchairs that will allow folks who are wheelchair users or have mobility considerations to access the beach and water more easily.

The wheelchairs will be available free of charge to the public in the 2023 season.

And, as a way of keeping up with a growing demand for certified lifeguards, the city will also increase pay for all its lifeguards in 2023 to remain competitive with the pay offered at other local beaches.

GRANT FUNDING

In an effort to continue enhancing the beach and making it more appealing to a wider audience in 2023, the city requested over $1.3 million in grant funding through New York state's Consolidated Funding Application (CFA) process.

Rosenquest said if they're granted the CFA funding, the city will be able to "really transform the landscape of the beach."

"Next year we do hope that some of these CFAs that we applied for, that focus on the beach, come to fruition," he said.

"We want to look at projects that not only enhance what we have up there, but...make it into more of a destination for not only sunbathers, but for people who want to hike, people who want to go out and enjoy a restaurant on the water — which we don't have a lot of those in the City of Plattsburgh...when we look at the city beach and what the future of that beach looks like, we do go back to revisit the waterfront feasibility study as a blueprint for what the vision was for the beach back then.

"If we do become lucky enough to win those CFAs for these beach projects, that would be fantastic. We can take that money and start to improve the vendor building and start to improve the bathhouse and those facilities and some of the infrastructure out there to make it more into a destination for restaurants and entertainment as well as beach going and sunbathing."

Email: cnewton@pressrepublican.com

Twitter: CarlySNewton