Are Broken Kiosks Costing Collingswood Merchants?

Although borough commissioners sent the Collingswood parking kiosks out for bid at their July meeting, relief can’t come soon enough for some Haddon Avenue business owners who say the malfunctioning meters are costing them real dollars. 

“It’s having a direct effect on me, on my business,” said Reed Orem, owner of Dig This.

Orem said that despite the best efforts of borough leadership to deal with the kiosk breakdowns, he’s seen enough frustrated and confused would-be patrons to know the town is losing customers.

“Four times today alone I’ve gone out to the kiosks and said to people, ‘you don’t have to pay,’” Orem said.

“I don’t even have a kiosk in front of my business,” he said. “They stand there and they don’t believe me.”

Orem said that he’s even seen occasional hand-made “out of order” signs crop up on some of the kiosks. Well-intentioned, all they do is echo the instructions of the their broken brethren: find another, working meter.

But when none of the meters works, he said, it sends shoppers on a veritable snipe hunt that eventually ends with them leaving town.

“I’ve definitely seen people, they’re rolling up with their kids, they get frustrated, they pull away,” Orem said.

“It’s the overall feeling ‘why would I pull back into this town if I can’t find a parking spot?’”

Until the cavalry arrives, Orem would prefer that borough leadership simply bag the kiosks “like we do at the holidays” to notify customers that the machines are out of order.

'We are working to permanently correct it' 

But Collingswood Mayor James Maley says that’s not an option the borough wants to move on.

“It’s not that they don’t work, period,” Maley said. “The issue is that they break down habitually.”

According to Maley, the borough won’t simply mark all the kiosks as out of order because many of them still function appropriately. 

(A trial kiosk from an alternative vendor in front of Nunzio’s restaurant on Haddon Avenue has been problem-free, he said.)

“If it’s something that can’t be fixed right away, we put a sign on it,” Maley said. “We’re replacing the machines. We are working to permanently correct it.

Mike DiBartolo of DiBartolo Bakery said that without paid parking, business owners and their employees have historically occupied parking spaces that should remain freed up for customers.

“I used to tell them, ‘You’re here for eight to 10 hours, you can’t walk across the street, or around the corner, and leave the spot open for your customers, or my customers, or your neighbors’ customers?” he said.

DiBartolo said that if business owners would simply use the public lots, they would “walk once” instead of losing business because their potential customers can’t find a spot to park.

“We do have plenty of parking in the underground garage,” he said. “There’s 170 spots. Nobody wants to use it. They have this thing about walking on the avenue.

“You’re 50 feet away,” he said. “What’s the problem?”

DiBartolo said that until the parking saga is resolved, everyone should be patient—and thank Collingswood Police Chief Richard Sarlo for his handling of the situation.

From the leniency he’s shown to downtown patrons frustrated by the devices to his endless dealings with the meter vendors to try and resolve the problems, Sarlo "has been doing a heck of a job trying to get this all together,” DiBartolo said.

“We’ve got to give him credit.” 

But the professionalism of the police department is not at issue in this case, Orem said.

“I’ve got all the respect in the world for Chief Sarlo and the police, but they shouldn’t be putting it on him,” Orem said.