Alert – ‘Proposed 2030 Traffic and Parking Plan For The Pine Avenue Corridor’

There is a ‘Proposed 2030 Traffic and Parking Plan For The Pine Avenue Corridor’ that is steamrolling along. It was unexpectedly presently at this week’s P&Z meeting and it will be presented at the City meeting on March 4, 2010. Please be there!

This is it folks! This is a huge issue for anyone who doesn’t want to see the commercial area intensified anymore than currently is allowed. Many see this is as an enormous threat to the charm and laid-back nature of our beach town just like the hotel issue was last year. I agree!

Please let the Commissioners know what you think and please come to the meeting on March 4, 2010!

The proposed plan, as depicted in a drawing by retired architect Gene Aubry and mentioned in this week’s, Feb. 24th Sun edition, p.24-25, shows approximately 160 angled parking spaces using the right-of-way on both sides of Pine Avenue. This proposed plan design has the 160 cars backing out onto Pine Avenue and has sidewalks placed on the private commercial properties. It is a poor traffic design with cars backing out onto one of our narrow main commercial roads. Can you visualize the increased traffic stopping and starting as cars pull in and out of all these spaces with the whole scene compounded by a trolley, which has no place to pull over, coming through twice every 20 minutes? (Click on ‘read more’…)
If City Code Chapter 90 (as explained here) is completely altered to enable this proposed plan, we will end up like every other over-commercialized, vehicle-oriented place – not our charming beach town. We are first and foremost a single-family city. We support a small, low-key business district. If the Pine Ave. ROR area gets to use the right-of-way to meet parking requirements, they will be able to increase their intensity of use, i.e. more retail/office area, more seating, etc.. Placing parking off-site doesn’t mean they won’t also place some parking on-site which will allow for even more intensity of use. Sliding required parking onto the right-of-way is commercial incrementalism at its finest. Surely they will want to do it on the Gulf Drive ROR properties too. And then they will want to do it on the Commercial C-1 district properties.

There is no doubt that commercialism will intensify and traffic will increase with the ‘off-site parking on the right-of-way’ plan. When Gulf Drive and Pine Avenue become more congested and a pain to navigate, people will start using the residential streets of Spring and Magnolia.

There is an alternative plan, a better plan. It is actually what our code calls for today. Commissioner Stoltzfus has been supporting current language in Chapter 90 that says all off-street parking areas shall be located solely on the subject property and that access to the lots must be provided by way of driveway openings or curb cuts. Recently, developers have used so-called ambiguities in the parking code Chapter 90 to say that parking in the ROR can back out across the entire frontage of the lots. As we are painfully aware, approval has been given to several site plans on Pine Avenue that have ‘back-out across the entire frontage’ design. Commissioner Stoltzfus has been advocating eliminating the so-called ambiguities in Chapter 90. These clarifications would ensure that the required parking for ROR properties remains solely on-site and that access to parking is by way of driveways. A good example of this design is the Sun Plaza, where the Sun newspaper is located, and at the Bayview Plaza where the post office is located.

Some say having on-site parking with driveways creates strip centers. In our city, small plazas interspersed with residential homes do not create the ugly long concrete strip centers that no one likes. Keeping the code where parking is contained in small plazas connected by sidewalks works in our City. When looking at the ROR district as a whole, this design provides for more landscaping opportunities and can actually be designed so that cars are partially screened from the street, like the Sun and Bayview Plazas.

Some people claim that driveway accessed on-site parking will not allow enough use on the property. What’s enough? The ROR lots have the opportunity under our current codes to elevate and provide parking under a mixed use building or simply to build a residence or a retail/office use. There is plenty you can do on all the ROR properties with parking solely on-site.

What do you want your City to become? Do you want to protect what we have today?

Please let the Commissioners know what you think and please come to the meeting on March 4, 2010!