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Downtown Delray gets parking help from the county

By Palm Beach Business.com

DELRAY BEACH — Delray’s Atlantic Avenue parking problem  suddenly has become a little less onerous.

Mayor Woodie McDuffie announced Tuesday that the city has reached an agreement with Palm Beach County officials for public use of the south Palm Beach County Courthouse garage after business hours and on weekends. The move adds 500 spaces to the city’s downtown inventory.

“All we have to do is put a guard there and clean it,” McDuffie said.

During last’s Tuesday’s commission workshop meeting on parking, McDuffie promised to pursue a deal with the county over use of the garage, which sits empty at night and on weekends.

Parking has been a major issue in the downtown, especially at night when the Atlantic Avenue restaurant and club scene comes alive. It’s been so bad that the city has been considering installing meters along Atlantic Avenue and side streets, in public parking lots and the two city-owned garages. That plan hasn’t been popular with merchants, downtown patrons and the commissioners themselves, who have sought alternatives to ameliorate the congestion while leaving meters on the table as a last resort.

The other major component of the problem is employee parking, and McDuffie made some progress on that front as well. Speaking at the end of Tuesday evening’s commission meeting, McDuffie said there are about 3,000 employees working downtown at the various restaurants, clubs, shops and offices, which he discovered with the help of the Downtown Development Authority. The problem now will be to figure out how many of those 3,000 work at any one time and to devise a plan to move their cars out of prime parking spaces and into the garages.

Only three of five commissioners attended Tuesday’s meeting. That caused commissioners to delay final reading of an ordinance that would have hiked the city’s business tax by five percent. McDuffie said a four-vote super majority is needed to approve the ordinance.

In other business, commissioners denied an appeal from the Firestone service center on Atlantic Avenue. The service center wants to change the all-glass doors on its service bays to a type that is mostly steel but the city’s Site Plan Review and Appearance Board rejected the doors as too industrial looking for the neighborhood. A spokesman for the company argued that installing a door with hurricane resistant glass would be prohibitively expensive.

But city Planning and Zoning Director Paul Dorling and two members of SPRAB said an all-glass door wasn’t necessary. They just wanted something less industrial looking than what Firestone has proposed.

Commissioners postponed a final vote on an ordinance that updates rules that govern pensions for city police and firefighters. The delay will allow the city’s pension attorney to review revisions requested by the pension board.

A zoning change for two lots on SW 12 Avenue received final approval Tuesday. The change will allow for the expansion of the Neighborhood Resource Center situated adjacent to the lots, which are owned by the Delray Beach Community Redevelopment Agency.