Westchester airport adds parking spots to alleviate holiday travel crunch

Bracing for the Thanksgiving crush, Westchester has added 60 parking spots at Westchester County Airport to handle the expected demand from holiday travelers.

But even that might not be enough.

Reserved spots at the airport parking garage are already booked for the Thanksgiving weekend. So county officials are warning that travelers looking to park at HPN should show up extra early to see if they can find an open spot.

Other options include having someone drop you off or reserving a spot at nearby Purchase College at the Purchase Park 2 Fly concession, which has shuttle service to the terminal.

“We strongly encourage travelers to make early parking reservations and to utilize the SUNY Purchase shuttle service or a general car service to avoid potential parking congestion during this busy period,” said county spokeswoman Catherine Cioffi.

Parking at Purchase can save travelers too, at $19 a day, compared to a daily charge of $31.50 at the airport.

You can also take the Beeline bus #12 from the White Plains Transcenter to the airport, on a route that leaves once or twice an hour, from 6:20 a.m. to 6 p.m. That service takes about 45 minutes.

Cioffi said the new parking spots, which increase available spaces by 4%, will repurpose areas adjacent to the long-term/overflow parking lot and another area by the parking garage. Collecting the daily fees will be the county's airport parking operator, a partnership of SP Plus and one of developer Louis Cappelli's companies, which was granted an additional 29 months on its 30-year privatization deal in May.

2003 policy bars increase in parking capacity

Limiting the number of parking spaces has long been a rallying cry for opponents of expansion of Westchester County Airport. In 2003, the county Board of Legislators set county policy with a resolution that affirmed its commitment to preserve limitations on airport facilities. Latimer, who then served in the county legislature, backed the resolution.

That included airport parking lots.

“The policy of the Westchester County Board of Legislators is and continues to be one of supporting no increase in the total capacity of the Airport’s runways, taxiways, ramps, gates, hangars, terminal, motor vehicle parking areas, or access roads in order that we may protect our fragile environment, including drinking water for almost 9 million people, from the noise, air and water pollution that any such expression would generate,” the resolution stated.

More: Cappelli's donations 'purely coincidental' to new lease at airport garage, says Jenkins

George Klein, who chairs the Coalition to Prevent Westchester Airport Expansion, said the addition of 60 parking spots would violate that resolution.

“It’s a blatant violation of the non-expansion resolution from the Board of Legislators in 2003, which explicitly excludes more parking,” said Klein.

But that part of the policy has a history of neglect since its enactment two decades ago. Since then, the county has added overflow parking on airport property, with little pushback.

When the parking garage opened in 1993, a decade before the policy was enacted, there were 1,100 parking spaces. Today, there are 1,675 spaces, an increase of 52%. Details on how many spaces were available when the police was enacted in 2003 were not available.

In recent years, the county has allowed parking along the entrance and exit ramps to the garage, as well as on grassy areas by the parking structure.

Cioffi said that increasing the capacity for on-site parking by 60 spaces should not be considered an expansion. She said that making a provision for more parking does not mean that there would be more activity at HPN.

“The airport is still the same size footprint and the TURs (terminal use regulations) still remain in effect for operations out of the terminal,” she said. “The flights customers are parking for are the ones governed by the TUR. It's hard to see how this could be reasonably spun as ‘expansion’ of the airport.”

More: Westchester airport parking: What extended deal would mean; legislators say they were misled

County legislators sided with the Latimer administration.

Communications Director Flora White, responding to questions placed to Board of Legislators Vice Chair Nancy Barr, D-Rye Brook, whose district includes the airport, and Board Chair Vedet Gashi, D-Yorktown, said that calling the new parking spaces an expansion was "a mischaracterization."

"This temporary repurposing is a necessary adaptation of an already-paved area to meet the immediate and temporary needs of travelers during the busiest travel period of the year for HPN," said White.

Airport Advisory Board weighs in

This move to increase parking for the Thanksgiving holiday comes as the county continues to work on its update of its airport master plan. County Executive George Latimer, who had criticized the master plan developed by his predecessor, Rob Astorino, launched a master plan supplement project in 2018 with a flurry of community meetings. Another round of public hearings were held 14 months ago.

Nick Hartman, who chairs the Westchester County Airport Advisory Board, said the addition of 60 new parking spots at the airport was broadly supported by the panel.

“Parking hitting capacity has been a longstanding concern at the airport and one of the more consistent frustrations expressed by residents who use the airport,” said Hartman, of Pelham. “The county’s changes here of reconfiguring some existing space was presented as a small operational adjustment to add some additional parking capacity.”

Hartman said that the new parking spots will be serving flights already allowed under the regulations.

“The airport is still the same size footprint and the TURs still remain in effect,” he said. “It’s hard to see how this could be reasonably spun as ‘expansion’ of the airport.”

Fellow advisory board member Peter Schlactus of Rye Town said the regulations’ relaxation of the passenger cap during holiday weekends will add to the parking crunch at Thanksgiving.

“The root cause of the overcrowding is the decision by airlines to schedule excessive flights during holiday weekends,” he said. “The county is in the position of having unhappy residents or needing to expand facilities to handle the busiest travel times.”

Those regulations, meanwhile, expire 13 months from now.

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David McKay Wilson writes about tax issues and government accountability. Follow him on Twitter @davidmckay415 or email him at dwilson3@lohud.com.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Westchester airport holiday travel parking spots may be policy violation