Rejected parking garage back on the table

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

To garage or not to garage. That apparently is the question. Again.

Although Key West City Commissioners voted unanimously in September not to pursue building a $4.4 million multi-story parking garage on Greene Street next to the Conch Republic Seafood House, they reversed that vote at their Nov. 15 meeting, deciding by a 5-2 vote to reexamine the issue. Commissioner Richard Payne sponsored the resolution, which halts plans to repave the existing Greene Street surface parking lot and directs city staff to reexamine a 2011 traffic study that made nine recommendations on how to reduce congestion in Old Town. One of those recommendations was to build two, four-story parking garages, one on top of the Greene Street lot and the other next to the new firehouse on Simonton and Angela streets. Both locations currently have paid, surface parking lots.

Payne said that when commissioners, including himself, voted to resurface the Greene street lot and discard the option to build a garage on that location, they didn’t have enough information to “intelligently weigh the questions involved.” And the primary question, he said, is how to create more parking in Old Town for visitors, thereby reducing congestion and helping area residents find street parking near their homes.

“We silently abandoned any future plans for a parking garage at that [Greene Street] location without actually saying what we were doing,” Payne said. “To continue along doing the same thing, not adding to our off-street parking, is not how we should go about adding off-street parking in Old Town. We are going backwards.”

Since Payne’s resolution would not cost any addition funds – staff would use the existing 2011 traffic study to make their recommendations – he won over enough of his commission colleagues to go forward. But if staff ultimately recommends that new parking structures be built, there is likely to be some heated discussion. Commissioner Jimmy Weekley and Mayor Craig Cates said they will not support tall parking garages in Old Town.

“Do we need to harm the looks of our community to have a huge parking garage just to have more parking,” asked Cates. “Although it [Greene Street garage] would probably make tons of money and help some of the businesses… what would we have given up for that, that beautiful location, the open area?”

But Commissioners Clayton Lopez, Margaret Romero and Sam Kaufman said that more downtown parking is sorely needed.

“If we had more paid parking, we would have happier residents because they could use their residential stickers a little closer to their homes,” Romero said.

No matter what decision commissioners ultimately make, it won’t please everyone. Several speakers went to the podium at the Nov. 15 meeting to voice strong opinions both for and against parking garages. Local resident Richard Talmadge called them “concrete dinosaurs” and urged commissioners to allow ride sharing services such as Uber and Lyft to help combat the parking shortage in Old Town. Kate Miano, owner of The Gardens Hotel on Angela Street across from the Simonton Street parking lot, said she walks her dog three times a day past the lot and it is never full. She consulted with the city parking department and found that from October 2015 to the same month this year, parking revenues in the Simonton lot had fallen 18.7 percent.

“The reality is the lot is not used that much. It’s never at capacity, maybe two days a year,” Miano said.

However, Ben McPherson, speaking for Historic Tours of America, which offers a variety of city tours to visitors, supported taking another look at the 2011 parking study.

“I think a lot of the parking problems and congestion are people driving around looking for parking,” he said.

Local physician Dr. John Norris agreed, saying that his disabled patients are dropped off at his front door while their caregiver drives around searching for parking.

“They have to park up to five or six blocks away in residential parking [spots]. They steal parking,” he said about his parking-challenged patients.

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