Parking Is The Least Of Stuart’s Worries
Living in Stuart sometimes involves trying to find a solution for problems of our own making.
For instance, the insistence by some city commissioners and downtown denizens that there is a parking problem. Much of the perceived problem is what many consider the downtown area, their perception is it encompasses only two streets which are each a block long. And most of them expect a parking space right in front of their intended destination.
Many would feel irritated to have to park on East Ocean by the courthouse and either ride the tram or walk two blocks. Stuart is not a mall where people might find a parking place in front of the anchor store, they are planning to visit. It is a city where parking a car should not be the most important thing. Ask any city planner.
Unfortunately, many believe that the make-believe problem would be solved by building a garage. That would only add at least one real problem and cost taxpayers a bundle of money. Those who say there would be a charge for parking to help offset the building cost are woefully naïve. Some years ago, paid parking was tried and the city ended it quickly because of the uproar.
Even if a city-owned property like the Sailfish lot is used to construct a garage, there is still the cost of the structure. Further the land is not free since it was purchased by the city and has a value. But if the garage is built, there are several ways to pay for it.
Users can be charged. To obtain the initial funds for construction, bonds can be obtained, and the parking fees can pay the interest and principal. The costs can be budgeted from the capital improvement budget or through CRA funds.
If the government charges for the use of the parking, there is an enforcement issue plus many people do not want to pay for parking. The same person that would choose to valet would be open to paying a modest sum to use the garage. Most others would pass it by and attempt to find on-street free parking. If the garage was free, taxpayers who never go downtown would subsidize those who do or anyone from anywhere else.
Or we can look at what city planners have been saying for the past 40 years…no need to have minimum parking standards. What happened to letting the market decide. Not only don’t we trust the market, but we also want to intrude and tell a developer how many parking spaces to provide his tenants or buyers.
It can cost thousands of dollars for each space provided. Parking minimums dictated by government rules make more and more housing unaffordable to the average person. Why are so many commissioners and some of the public so afraid that the place will fall apart unless government dictates how to solve parking needs?
If all we want are the affluent as residents, then keep on putting more and more impediments to a working person being able to afford to live here. Those that say they want to keep our character then need to know what that character really is. Stuart was not founded as a rich enclave but as a blue-collar working-class community.
It was comprised of tradesman and shopkeepers. Lawyers and doctors lived side by side with teachers and cops. White and Black people called Stuart home. Whether you were a store clerk, a working fisherman, or the school principal, there was a home for you.
That has sadly ended because of the wrong-headed notion that Stuart was a place for only single-family homes. Many lived in the large and small multi-family dwelling structures that dotted the city. There were once 57 apartments in a structure on East Ocean and High School Avenue. It was a modern apartment house when erected in 1926.
Many of the teachers at the old high school lived there as tenants. Today under current density requirements, the land would only hold 10 or 15 units at most. On the same property now, there are a few townhouses built about a decade ago that no schoolteacher could afford.
In order to stop the gentrification of Stuart, placing obstacles in the way of having a business, and residents in the city must be curtailed. We used to be a place that allowed the market to dictate whether there was a need for one parking space, three parking spaces, or no parking spaces. Because of arcane planning rules, our city has gotten away from our heritage.
We don’t need to build a garage downtown. If the market identified the need, private industry would and should fill it. The same goes for housing. We need to stop dictating what type of housing we need. A vibrant city needs many types of housing throughout. We should not use archaic parking regulations to make housing unaffordable to anyone but the rich.
