The Botanical Garden is making progress on its long-delayed new parking garage at Webster Avenue and Bedford Park Boulevard.

When open, the garage, next to the Metro-North Botanical Garden station, on the west side of the tracks, will accommodate 800 cars. It will be open to Garden visitors, but also local residents and commuters who use Metro-North.

“This new parking facility was designed to accommodate the Garden’s growing audience,” said Nick Leshi, a Garden spokesman, in an email, “but it will also benefit the community in a number of direct and indirect ways. By taking advantage of new Garden membership packages, community residents will be able to park their cars overnight and commuters may use the garage to park and ride.”

While parking prices have yet to be released, the Botanical Garden is asking area residents to fill out a survey concerning their parking needs. Whether or not the “membership packages” will include free access to the Garden, hasn’t been determined.

“Parking in this area is very scarce and the new parking garage will take a load off my back when I come home tired from work,” said Jenny Cuevas, a local resident. “[I’ll] no longer have to circle the block four times in the hope of finding a parking space.”

The $50 million garage will be an open-air concrete structure with one basement and seven floors. Most of the funding came from the city and the state.

Barbara Stronczer, president of the Bedford Mosholu Community Association, said it will be “a plus for the neighborhood.”

“We hope this will be the first step in the revitalization of Webster Avenue,” Stronczer added. (Plans to rezone parts of Webster are moving forward, with the aim of encouraging more residential and small-retail development.)

There are concerns, though, that the garage’s ongoing construction will clog traffic and hamper existing parking in the area. “Needless to say many residents are upset,” Stronczer said.

On Botanical Square, for example, 25 parking spaces will be eliminated from February through June. And for all of June, Botanical Square South will be closed 24 hours a day to both vehicles and pedestrians.

The Garden is looking to keep disruption to a minimum, and find alternative parking for local car-owners during the construction phase, Stronczer said.

Construction is expected to wrap up in spring 2012.

–Additional reporting by James Fergusson

Editor’s Note: To obtain a copy of the Botanical Garden’s parking survey, or to ask questions, call (718) 817-8694 or e-mail visitorservices@nybg.org.