Upgrades to Passaic County Tech Could Add Parking Garage to Help Keep Students from Parking on Wayne Streets

WAYNE, NJ – Architect Steven M. Coppa, of Coppa Montalbano Architects, was in front of the Wayne Planning Board for a capital review recently. He was representing the Passaic County Vocational and Technical Schools (Passaic Tech) and discussing possible plans to add a new athletic facility and a parking garage on the campus of the school, among other upgrades.

According to Coppa, Passaic Tech “has over 500,000 square feet of space and 5,000 students,” making it the largest high school in New Jersey. “That’s why we need the parking," he said.

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For Mayor Chris Vergano, the hope is that a new parking garage will help alleviate issues on the surrounding streets.

“A big problem in Wayne is that visitors to your school and students park in our residential neighborhoods,” he said. “What we’ve done is made it all no parking, and we keep expanding and expanding. [Students] walk pretty far to park their cars, and when there are athletic events, those people also park in our neighborhoods. So, we end up sending the Police Department up there to write tickets. It’s just not a good situation.”

Coppa began his presentation by describing upgrades which include renovations to the “C-Wing” and the “E-Wing,” as well as the addition of several rooftop air-conditioning condensing units and an emergency generator for their sewer system. All of this, he said, was “internal.”

Possible Improvements Coming to Passaic County Technical Vocational Schools in Wayne NJ Photo Credits: Coppa Montalbano Architects

“None of these affects any of the surrounding property owners,” he said. “There's nothing on Oldham Road and there's nothing on Preakness Ave.; nothing that you'll be able to perceptively see.”

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The big project is “not in the works yet, but it’s underway for a study ,” he said next, adding that he was there in front of the Wayne Planning Board as a courtesy simply to collect opinions and comments on these projects.

“We would like to convert that area, which is all parking, into a multi-purpose athletic facility,” he said. “Students are running out of space. There’s baseball fields, there's football fields but there's no general athletic space.”

He was referring to an area on campus where the existing tennis courts are located, running along Kattak Parkway and close to the Passaic County Police Academy.

Possible Improvements Coming to Passaic County Technical Vocational Schools in Wayne NJ Photo Credits: Coppa Montalbano Architects

The “athletic facility” may end up being an enclosed space, according to Coppa, or it may be convertible with the ability to open the space in good weather and seal it closed during bad weather. He also added that the area would be available for the public to rent.

Segueing to the next project, Coppa said, “To do that, I have to put the parking in a structure," then described its location and traffic flow.

The parking garage would be constructed near the intersection of Reinhardt Road and Kattak Parkway, just to the northwest of the school’s media center and will end up “conjoined” with the parking lot for the Public Safety Academy, where the recently built Passaic County Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall was installed.

“So, we're going to then conjoin both sites,” he said. “We'll have some on-grade parking at the level of the access to the Public Safety Academy. And then, as you go downhill, you'll be able to access the parking from the lots that now supply the tech with the majority of the parking on that side.”

Mayor Chris Vergano asked how many new parking spaces will be created, to which Coppa replied that the net additional new spaces would be between 100 and 120, and said that the parking garage will “be open for the college and for tech use and anybody that's going up there to visit the memorial.”

Possible Improvements Coming to Passaic County Technical Vocational Schools in Wayne NJ Photo Credits: Jon "Ferris" Meredith

The hope is that the addition of the parking garage will help alleviate the parking problems in the area. But, as the architect said, this is being studied as a possibility, and there is no guarantee that it will happen at all.

Passaic Tech's current plan is to lease the Mahatma Ghandi Center on Preakness Avenue, “to try to take some [parking] pressure off of the downhill Preakness Avenue side,” said Coppa. He feels that they can create another 100 extra parking spaces in this location and direct traffic for athletic events there.

Should the parking garage become a reality, Coppa believes it will relieve a lot of traffic on Preakness Avenue, as he envisions the flow of traffic to go from the parking garage to Kattak Parkway, to Valley View Road and out to Central Ave. Or down Kattak to Oldham and then to Central Ave (which becomes the Paterson Hamburg Turnpike).

However it turns out, Coppa ensured the board members that, “Whatever we do there, it will be designed to meet your building department's strict [guidelines].”

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