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Growing pain
By SHARON L. BOND, Neighborhood Times Business Editor ST. PETERSBURG -- A woman is having her hair done at Beach Drive Hair Studio. Just as the stylist begins to wrap the curling iron under the ends of her longish cut, the customer gets up, towel still on her shoulders, and starts out the door. Her 90 minutes of free parking on Beach Drive are up. Her car must be moved or she will get a $17.50 ticket. Owner Harold Stevens stops the client, fills out a permit and takes it to her car to display on her dashboard. When the customer leaves, the permit will have to be retrieved. It is good only for the park side of Beach Drive, not the side with spaces facing the shops. It can be used only seven times and then has to be turned in to the city in order to get a new one. Beach Drive Hair Studio, with six stylists and from 60 to 80 customers daily, gets only two permits. Now that downtown St. Petersburg is a destination spot, street parking is a coveted convenience. And the availability and regulation of parking spaces is a constant topic of debate. Last year across the city, St. Petersburg issued almost 39,000 parking tickets and collected nearly $870,000. The numbers are on the rise. "I think ever since they changed the parking regulations, we've had nothing but a hassle for our business and clients," said hairstylist George Bowers. It takes longer than 90 minutes to give a permanent or color treatment. He thinks the salon should receive permits that also cover parking in front of the stores. Alan Lucas, owner of the Moon Under Water restaurant farther down Beach Drive, has the same problem. Ninety minutes is not long enough for dinner, particularly if patrons have to wait for a table. He wants the restriction lifted after 6 p.m. "Now you've got customers running in and out. People getting up from the table in the middle of a banquet and going out to move their cars," Lucas said. The 90-minute limit exists because a majority of merchants on Beach Drive asked for it. "We are in favor of 90-minute parking with a few exceptions," said Suzanne Fisher, manager of Coplon's, a women's clothing shop. She was speaking as president of the Beach Drive Merchants Association, which has 55 members, including downtown businesses on streets other than Beach. The limit keeps BayWalk patrons and employees from taking up all the spaces. But several merchants said it wasn't long enough, particularly when they were trying to load or unload merchandise for their stores. The 90-minute limit on street spaces is bounded by Fifth Avenue N on the north, Beach Drive on the east, First Avenue N on the south, and between Second and Third streets on the west, Oropesa said. It has riled longtime residents, shoppers, moviegoers and merchants. "Ninety minutes is to force people to use off-street parking for long-term" business, said Philip L. Oropesa, parking manager for the city. Oropesa said the city is not trying to force motorists into its garage, which was built to accommodate BayWalk. The garage is not meant to be a moneymaker. The $1 cost for four hours is designed to get the city to a break-even point financially. Parking officials want motorists to use any off street parking, which includes several other garages and a couple of lots near downtown. "There are 4,000 parking spaces within a three-square-block radius," Oropesa said. "There is a lot of parking." Garages suggest less convenience for some, though. Motorists go for street parking first. "For people who grew up with garages, like I did in New York City, it is not an issue," said Oropesa. "For people new to it, obviously they've read stories about people being mugged. And the fact that you have to drive around once you get in the garage and then pay. In St. Petersburg, that is a big deal." There have been few incidents at the garage, but it takes only one to scare users. "That facility, Mid Core Garage, is as safe as a public garage can be," Oropesa said. "We can't guarantee someone's safety. All we can do is take steps to make it as safe as possible. I don't know of another facility (in Pinellas or Hillsborough counties) that has the level of security we have put in there." Those coveted slotsA dollar for four hours at the Mid Core garage may not be a great sum of money. But when competing with free street parking, even time-limited street parking, the garage is not the first choice, Oropesa said. Everyone considers the free street spaces theirs, he said. Enforcement is much more aggressive now. Tickets are written into the evening hours, a fact made obvious by the parking patrol carts inching along the streets chalking tires. Still, some people refuse to believe they will be cited, Oropesa said. He gets letters from people that say, "I read the sign and I know what it said, but I just didn't believe you would do it." Or, "I parked there and the sign said two hours, and I came back in two hours and 10 minutes and I got a ticket. You are overzealous." Changes in parking regulations were not made arbitrarily, Oropesa said. A number of meetings were held with downtown merchants and residents near BayWalk before the complex opened in November 2000. "We tried to explain what a 2-million-visitor-a-year destination was going to do to the neighborhood," Oropesa said. "It didn't turn out to be 2-million. It turned out to be 3-million." Also, the number of residents living downtown has increased in the past three years as condominium towers opened. A large apartment complex is under construction now. While most residents in the new housing have parking space within their structures, they still are affected by street regulations because of visitors and deliveries, Oropesa noted. BayWalk changed everythingParking in many parts of downtown was for two hours, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., weekdays only, before BayWalk. That left nights and weekends free, and enforcement was not as fierce as it is now. When BayWalk opened, its employees parked in the free spaces, Oropesa said. Some left their cars all day, and spaces on Beach Drive were among those affected. BayWalk patrons who went to the 20-screen Muvico theater that anchors the complex also took advantage of free street parking rather than park in the garage. And when weekend festivals such as Mainsail Arts Festival, going on this weekend in Straub Park, come to town, vendors would pull into street spaces on Friday evening and stay until Sunday evening. Beach Drive merchants complained that their shoppers and suppliers could not find parking in front of their stores as a result. So the city lowered the time to 90 minutes and made it seven days a week, 24 hours a day. "Ninety minutes is not long enough to see a movie," Oropesa said. He admits, however, that no regulations he can think of are going to please everyone. When darkness fallsLucas, the Moon Under Water owner, is not in the merchants association and has launched a full-scale war against the 90-minute limit. He wants the city to lift the restrictions after 6 p.m. He sent 20 to 30 pages of signatures backing him to City Hall, he said. On Wednesday he posted his objections in the British colonial restaurant. "I am the only business open after 6 p.m.," Lucas said. "On Central, there are no limits. "How is 90 minutes helping in the evening when (other businesses) are not open?" Lucas asked. Several other Beach Drive merchants, such as Bruce Watters Jewelers, agree with lifting the 90-minute restriction at night. Oropesa does not. Most businesses may be closed on Beach Drive at night, but several hundred residents remain, he said. Also, having no restrictions after 6 p.m. would bring back night shift workers who hunt out free parking, Oropesa said, leaving Moon Under Water without any again. The city tried a permit system with the restaurant, but because the permits did not have to be retrieved, patrons used them beyond the single time for which they were intended. Sometimes they got tickets, which angered them because they thought they were exempt. So that was stopped. Oropesa said he hoped another permit system could be worked out for the restaurant. Central Avenue does not have the 90-minute limit because the demand is less than for the spaces on Beach Drive, Oropesa said. South Core garage is there, along with one that serves the St. Petersburg Yacht Club. The dreaded m-wordParking meters could be installed on Beach Drive, Oropesa said, but that idea brings objections from many Beach Drive merchants. Meters are one way to offer specific timed parking for a business, and patrons can keep feeding a meter if they want to stay. That is one of the objections, according to Bruce Watters Jewelry, which adamantly opposes meters for Beach Drive. "If your calling card is the waterfront ... you want to keep that your crown jewel," said Jim Watters, vice president for the longtime, family-owned business. Free parking is important to that end, he said. "We definitely don't want meters on Beach Drive," said Bob Serata of Bernies & Son jewelers. "They are ugly and they are a nuisance. We are a quaint little shopping area. The malls have free parking. We have to compete at least with free parking." Parking is not likely to be any less of an issue in years to come if St. Petersburg's downtown keeps growing and improving. "I'm of a mindset, I'm glad we have a parking problem because it means people are here," Watters said.
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