Nick Scamuffa’s hair salon in Newtown Square stayed closed through the weekend while he sold parking spaces to PGA Championship fans for $150 to $200 a day. At the same time, residents and business owners near Aronimink Golf Club were putting up signs of their own, turning lawns and driveways into temporary lots during the tournament’s return to the area for the first time in 64 years.
Scamuffa said Nicholas Sebastian Salon & Spa on State Route 252 could fit as many as 100 cars and that the setup made more sense than leaving the lot empty while traffic around the course snaked up. “We can’t just be closed,” he said, adding that he had reached the point where “if you’re expecting 200,000 people [at the tournament], I just need a few hundred of them to park.” He said patrons could walk through a neighborhood to the nearest course entrance in less than 10 minutes or ride there in one of his golf carts.
The demand has been strong enough to make parking one of the clearest side businesses of the week. As of Wednesday, official parking passes on the primary market appeared to be sold out, while resellers were asking between $400 and $800 per spot. The PGA’s prepaid lots cost $40 or more and came with a 10-minute shuttle ride to Aronimink, but the organization also pushed fans toward SEPTA Regional Rail to Paoli and then a 12-minute shuttle to the course.
That left homeowners close to the club with a simple calculation. Street parking is prohibited in the neighborhoods surrounding Aronimink, and spectators cannot park on-site, so anyone who wants to drive has to find a spot elsewhere. Some local homeowners were asking $150 or more for parking during the later rounds over the weekend, and one resident, Lexi Dahlin, was renting out nine spots on her lawn and a few more in her driveway about half a mile from the course for between $100 and $150 a day. “You don’t have this happen very often,” she said. “If there is an opportunity to make money, why not?”
The setup underscores how differently the tournament is affecting the neighborhood economy. Parking is in demand while local Airbnb demand has been soft, a contrast that has sent more of the week’s money toward driveways, lawns and business lots than guest rooms. Scamuffa said his lot could generate as much as $20,000 a day if all the reservations came through, and he already had about 100 total reservations lined up.
For Newtown Square, the PGA Championship has turned a traffic headache into a short-term market. The people who live and work closest to Aronimink are not waiting for the crowds to pass; they are renting out the only thing the tournament cannot bring with it — space.
