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Parking space rules challenge for board

The formula for allocating parking spaces needs updating, say business owners in Madeira Beach.

MADEIRA BEACH - As this city has grown from quaint fishing village to tourist and retail attraction, so has the number of cars grown in John's Pass Village.

One commodity has not changed: the number of available parking spaces. The ordinances that require all businesses to provide parking by formulas based on volume and use also have not changed. Monday's Board of Adjustment meeting, top-heavy with parking variance requests, stretched past four hours.

Exasperated officials are asking for help. They say that parking ordinances have not kept pace with an era of redevelopment and shrinking space.

"When people need 21/2 times the space they have to do what they need to do, it puts us in an awkward position," said Joe Jorgenson, chairman of the Board of Adjustment, which has final say on variance requests and exceptions to codes. Five of seven items on Monday's docket were requests from business owners seeking to reduce their required number of parking spaces.

"That tells you there's a problem with the codes," Jorgenson said shortly after the meeting adjourned at 11:12 p.m. The board agreed without a vote to file a formal resolution that the city's Planning Commission study ways to revisit parking requirements, which they say can ruin business owners who don't supply more spaces because they can't: The city is built out.

Nowhere do drivers face a more intimidating squeeze than in John's Pass Village, where small parking lots come equipped with signs threatening to tow noncustomers. Three of Monday's requests came from new restaurant owners along Boardwalk Place.

All three locations - Sundowner's Island Grill, Parsley's European Restaurant and Ra-Ra's on the Boardwalk - once were private homes, with the parking spaces to match. In mid April, code inspectors ordered the owners to reduce their seating within 30 days.

The formula for restaurants cut the available daytime seating for Parsley's down to 12. Board of Adjustment members allowed owner Jurgen Wochnik to seat 57 and gave Sundowner's owner Jim Morgan a similar break.

But they turned down a request for a coffee shop at 15027 Gulf Blvd., which hoped to reduce its number of required parking spaces from 16 to zero.

City commissioners express mixed views on what can be done to get parking back on track. Charles Parker noted the existence of 179 parking meters in John's Pass now and the expected boost from Hubbard Enterprises' 400-space parking garage, which will increase the Village's parking capacity by 100. If parking in front of restaurants is a problem, Parker said, customers can always walk.

Patricia Hubbard, the chief financial officer for Hubbard Enterprises, said the city's recently created master plan calls for three parking garages in John's Pass Village and encourages a pedestrian-friendly "park once" approach. Unrealistic regulations foment the problem, she said.

"Some of these restaurants are built to zero lot lines, which was allowed in 1924," Hubbard said. "Are you going to make them tear the restaurant down?"

"It's a sticky situation," Commissioner Roger Koske said. "I don't know what the solution is to it."

Treasure Island changed its parking formulas two years ago because officials found the old regulations too restrictive. Lynn Rosetti, a city planner who helped write the new ordinance, said the formula was changed from one based on seating to a flat rate - "one space for every 150 feet of gross usable area, and so far it seems to be okay."

Madeira Beach Commissioner Doreen Moore cautioned against trying to fix parking as an isolated problem. The city is reviewing its land development regulations, and that is where the work should be done, Moore said. "You can mess something up by taking it out of context," she said.

Wednesday at noon, John Moore, 43, tried to make garlic knots and pizza while taking delivery orders at Ra-Ra's on the Boardwalk. The Board of Adjustment postponed his variance request - from 20 parking spaces to zero - until he gets a landlord's signature. Currently he has only four spaces at Get Wet Watersports available across the street, and only after 5 p.m.

"If they make me have parking, I have no restaurant," Moore said.

For every three seats in a restaurant, one parking space is required. And for every five spaces required, tack on another space. So, 30 seats in your restaurant? That's 12 parking spaces. How? Ten parking spaces (or one for every three seats), plus two more spaces (for each five spaces needed). Got it?