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Home My WebLink About2007-06-27 Parking Report Campus-wide Parking Report for Brooks School ZdQ� North Andover, Massachusetts Nol��G pcppRMNrt P��y�111*1 Submitted to: Town of North Andover Massachusetts RFS 199-4153 August 10, 1999 Rist-Frost-Shumway Engineering, P.C. Consulting Engineers 71 Water Street Laconia, New Hampshire 03246 Office: (603) 524-4647 FAX: (603) 528-7653 E-Mail: rfs@rfsengineering.com I`F SSNuH,(,5U-w-MF1Wm@A`3Yv Table of Contents A. INTRODUCTION B. EXISTING PARKING SPACES C. PARKING NEEDS D. REGULATORY ISSUES E. PROPOSED PARKING PLAN TC-i 199-4153 RFSSHUMWAY Campus-wide Parking Re Port A. INTRODUCTION The purpose of this report is to satisfy the ToNvn of North Andover regarding adequacy of on-campus parking at Brook School, Brooks School is a private boarding school located on Great Pond Road. The main campus sits on a pair of parcels totaling 165 acres. The School also owns most of the land across Great Pond Road from the main campus. The School currently has 340 students, which includes 98 day students. Current faculty and staff totals 150. Of these, 43 faculty members reside on campus, many of wham have spouses and children. There are no significant secondary uses of the property — that is, there are no commercial, manufacturing,or service business activities taking place otherthan the business of operating the school. Except for the hockey rink (see below),no building space is rented or leased for occupancy by outside parties. The campus has outdoor athletic fields, a gymnasium, and a hockey rink. There is an auditorium for theatrical presentations. These and all other campus facilities are for the exclusive use by the School for its students, except that the hockey rink is rented out to outside groups on an hourly basis. The School hosts a soccer camp.computer camp,and a popular children's day camp program in the summer I onths_ The School is planning a major new building program over the next several years, intended primarily to upgrade and improve facilities, but not to increase student population. The program will be constructed in stages and each project will proceed through the necessary local permitting processes at the appropriate times. Main elements in the program are: I. The Campus Center/Dining Hall project—a dining hall and student center. 2. Replacement of the main overhead campus electrical service with an underground service- 3. A new Athletic Facility— to attach to the existing hockey rink. 4. A new Maintenance facility—to replace an existing building to be removed. 5. Renovations and additions to the Headmaster's House—removal of dining facilities and conversion to admissions and other administrative services.. 6. Relocation of the Peabody House dormitory, the small Manual Training building, and the small Mens building_ 7. A new dormitory. The parking plan presented herein is intended to cover all the parking aspects of the elements in the campus building program, so that as individual projects come before regulatory boards, the parking issue will have been addressed as a whole. 199-4153 1 RFSSHUMWAY Campus-wide Parking Re ort B. EXISTING PARKING SPACES The campus contains 33 buildings, and has 30 separate parking areas. Drawing l shows the existing parking areas and number of spaces, plus the name and use of each significant building. There are at present a total of 336 parking spaces, of which 33 are enclosed garage spaces. The largest lots are as follows: Athletic Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Used for autos and buses for fall and spring outdoor (94 spaces) sports events and the rally point for the summer day camp program. This lot also serves as an overflow lot for staff. Hockey Rink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Used by those using the rink,but also by maintenance (66.spaces) staff.day students,and visitors for events elsewhere on campus. Opposite Existing Maintenance Building . . Generally used by maintenance and food service (24 spaces) staff and visitors with maintenance or food service business. Occasionally used by visitors for gym and theatrical events. Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Generally used by administrative staff and (2/ors. 22 and 14 spaces, respectively) business related visitors. The School has a large amount of open fields, one of its more valuable assets. Some of these fields are utilized for short-term major event parking—primarily commencement. It would be hard to imagine any event which would exhaust the available open space. Indeed, no one associated with the school can recall there ever being a time when a motorist was forced to parkin a public right-of-way,or anywhere off campus, because of an event at the School. C. PARKING NEEDS Currently there are approximately 160 faculty and staff cars traveling to and from campus during a school day. Not all of these are on campus at the same time, as there are swing shift staff persons and several faculty spouses who work off campus during weekdays. Currently, there are 67 student car permits—mostly for day students,but not all of them drive every day. The parking needs of the suminer day camp program are approximately 60 spaces, which is more than offset by the seasonal decrease in staff(about 50), and no regular students with autos are on campus in the summer. Brooks School competes in the 1SL League for interscholastic athletics. Most of the visiting teams arrive by bus rather than automobile. Maximum attendance at sports events is about 400, approximately Nvo-thirds being Brooks students and faculty already on campus. Usually attendance is cons'derably less. often there are only a few spectators. Even though Brooks has an excellent sports 199-4153 2 RFS �II�LI��L1 �OG L1 SHUMWAY Campus-wide Parkin Re ort program. since it is a boarding school competing with other boarding schools, sports attendance in general is not as large as that for many public schools. Brooks School students come from a wide geographic area, so there is naturally less regular attendance from family members who would have to travel a great distance. Many of the schools in the League are upwards of an hour's drive away.so often there are few spectators associated with visiting teams. A reasonable estimate for spaces required during a peak athletic event would be four buses and 40 automobiles. Allowing three spaces for each bus gives a demand of approximately 5 2 -60 spaces. The space estimate would be approximately true for other significant events, except for graduation and arrival day. The peak daily demand for parking spaces would occur when there is a significant athletic or other such event during a weekday morning or afternoon. Peak Parking Estimate Faculty and Staff . . . . . . . . 140 Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Major Event Visitors . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Other Visitors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Total 270 Since there are presently 336 spaces on campus,there is a fairly comfortable excess of available spaces. This explains why no one ever needs to park off campus. It is recognized, however,that not all the parking spaces are located in places where people would like to have them. A motorist looking for a parking space will tend to use the one closest to his or her destination and will often park in a non-parking space when the regular spaces are taken. At Brooks this is sometimes evident in the central portion of the campus along Main Street between the Headmaster's building and Service Road, and the several parking lots off Service Road. From time to time, cars are found parked along Main Street and clustered around the fringe areas of parking lots and access drives. While the situation rarely could be termed hazardous in terms of impeding emergency vehicles, it is sometimes cluttered and inconvenient for pedestrians. These concerns are addressed in the Proposed Parking Plan below. D. REGULATORY ISSUES Like most municipalities,the Town of North Andover has established regulations for off-street parking. The applicable regulations are contained in subsection 9.1 of the Town Zoning Bylaw. The underlying purpose of most municipal parking regulations is public safety and order. Frequent irregular parking patterns.particularly on public rights-of-way,cause unsafe conditions for pedestrians and motor vehicles and can impede access for fire, police, and emergency vehicles. Also. regulations attempt to 199-4153 3 RFSG3��34 L�G3®34 SHUMW" Campus-wide Parkipg Report accommodate future occupants of a parcel of land by establishing standards other than simply meeting the parking needs of the original owner or tenant. The North Andover regulations contain a table indicating the minimum number of parking spaces required for various land uses. A perusal of that table shows that none of the land uses is comparable with that of a private boarding school such as Brooks. While the campus does contain uses covered in the table (e.g_, "office," "auditorium," "residence," "athletic fields"), these uses are integral with the function of the school, as opposed to stand-alone, single-user facilities on a separate parcel of land. Most of the persons using these facilities are students already on campus without a vehicle requiring a parking space. As to the concept of providing for adequate parking for future owners or tenants, suffice it to say that the School has been in existence in its present location since 1926,has a solid base of alumni ar�d other friends and benefactors, and is very unlikely to move or close. Even if this were to happen, there are acres of undeveloped open space, so parking facilities could be built for an), conceivable future use. There is certainly no need to pave any existing open spaces now to satisfy this concept. As to the concept of avoiding hindrance to emergency vehicles,the proposed parking plan(see below) adds significant parking spaces near the location of highest demand and should relieve any tendency of localized overcrowding. The Town regulations do have a provision (para_ 8.1.5)in case a particular land use does not"fit" into any of the recognized categories. The school desires for the Town to recognize its special circumstance and to assess the adequacy of on-campus parking on the basis of established patterns under this general provision. E. PROPOSED PARKING PLAN Exhibit 2 shows the new and relocated buildings which form the core of the capital improvements plan over the next several years. As can be seen, there is significant additional parking targeted for the central area of the campus where the demand is highest.The changes to parking spaces are summarized below: • New Maintenance Building—new lot adds 28 spaces but eliminates 9;Net= -+-19 • Campus Center/Dining Hall -eliminates 12;Net= -12 • Athletic Facility-hockey and athletic field parking lots reconfigured for same total spaces, adds 17 spaces in front;Net=+17 • Relocated Manual Training - lot reconfigured for same total spaces;Net= 0 • Headmaster's Building -new lot adds 18 spaces, eliminates 2, Net=-+-16 4 199-4153 RFSSHUMWAY Cara us-wide Parking Report • new parking added to replace existing; Net— 0 Relocated Men's Building and Peabody House The aggregate change adds 40 spaces, all in the locations of highest demand. This represents a 12% increase in total spaces campus-wide. The building program is still in the planning stages. The School requests that the Town not insist that each new or reconfigured lot hold exactly to the number of spaces indicated above, as long as the aggregate increase is achieved at the conclusion of the program. 199-4153 5