Greene Street parking garage dead

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

It may have been a good idea initially but further research has essentially killed a proposal to build a multi-story parking garage on Greene Street.

The garage proposal, floated to city commissioners in April, would have created a four-story garage with 193 parking spaces on the existing parking lot next to the Conch Republic Seafood House. The cost was estimated at $4.4 million. While commissioners were divided on the larger question of how to increase parking to help reduce traffic congestion in the historic district, they gave to go-ahead to city engineers to explore the Greene Street location as well as a second garage next to the new fire station on Simonton Street.

But City Engineer Gary Volenec said that the irregular shape of the existing Greene Street parking lot combined with a gravel parking area leased to the next-door Conch Republic Seafood House made it difficult to design a garage with the requisite ramps and stairwells.

“It complicates the efficiency of a lay out,” Volenec said.

As a result, the Key West Bight Management District Board earlier recommended a plan that would repave the existing flat parking lot, combine it with the gravel portion and add buffers, landscaping and storm water management. After discussion, city commissioners voted unanimously Sept. 20 to support the Bight Board’s recommendation.

For the paving project to proceed, however, the Conch Republic restaurant owners would have to agree to give up control of the gravel portion, which they currently lease out to lobster boat captains for trap storage. But the restaurant lease is up for renewal next April and negotiations will include returning the gravel portion to city control, Volenec said. In addition, the restaurant owners do not want a parking garage so close to their business, said restaurant attorney Ginny Stones. The owners want a surface parking lot to support “requirements for our working waterfront, our commercial fisheries and the restaurant, the successful operation that contributes $800,000 a year in rent to the city of Key West,” she said.

“Right now, the way the property is configured,” said City Manager Jim Scholl, “without encroaching on the business, especially the historic fish house piece of the business, there’s really not enough physical space, length and width, to do a proper parking garage just in the narrow portion of the land that isn’t impacted by the lease of the [Conch Republic] building.”

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