City proceeds with paid parking plans

On Monday, the City Commission voted unanimously to buy a new pay-to-enter system for the State Street parking garage — a sign that the city is preparing to charge for parking downtown, though perhaps not imminently.

Mark Lyons, the city’s parking manager, said the $217,000 budget request was laying the groundwork for charging to enter public downtown parking garages. A similar system is already in place at the Palm Avenue garage.

The exact timeline for implementing paid parking is still unclear. The city knows it wants to keep the garages free to park in for at least three hours, giving people an incentive to pass on more desirable on-street spaces.

This winter, the Art Ovation Hotel is scheduled to open at the corner of Palm Avenue and Cocoanut Avenue — right next to the Palm Avenue garage. That hotel has the right to use up to 305 of the 743 spaces in the city-owned garage.

City staff sees the opening of the hotel as a key date for the potential implementation of paid parking in downtown garages.

“We feel like the city ought to be able to recover some of the expenses incurred when the activity in that facility picks up,” Lyons said.

Last year, the City Commission adopted a comprehensive parking strategy that included plans to institute paid parking throughout downtown. Originally, Lyons hoped to have meters in place by this summer, charging to park on high-volume spaces on Main Street, Palm Avenue and Ringling Boulevard.

That process has taken longer than hoped. The city is still in the process of searching for a vendor to provide parking meters. That’s a crucial step, because a 2011 paid parking program drew strong criticism after the public perceived the meters as difficult to use.

On Thursday, a committee selected to review the potential vendors is expected to discuss the submissions. Once the committee picks its favored proposals, the city plans to put the top two or three meters on display downtown and on St. Armands Circle for the public to review.

After the committee makes its final recommendation, staff will present a timeline for implementation to the City Commission. Lyons said he hopes a potential agreement with a vendor could get to the commission early next year, with the city phasing the meters in beginning in early summer 2018.

Plans to install paid parking downtown still remain controversial, particularly among some downtown businesses. Ron Soto, chairman of the Sarasota Downtown Merchants Association, suggested an alternative for addressing a shortage of parking spaces downtown: enforcing time restrictions on Main Street later into the night, rather than stopping at 6 p.m.

A merchants association survey indicated more than 80% of businesses opposed a return to paid parking downtown. But some downtown leaders have spoken favorably about the plan — and they hope to stay engaged with city staff as meters are phased in. At Tuesday’s Downtown Improvement District meeting, board member Mark Kauffman asked Lyons to appear at October’s meeting to provide an update on the strategy.

Lyons said the city intends to keep the public up to date as it progresses toward implementing paid parking downtown. Since the city adopted its comprehensive parking strategy, Lyons has continually acknowledged the sensitivity of the issue — and stressed the importance of clear communication and thoughtful planning in achieving a successful outcome.

“It’s important we take the right steps to move this along carefully and not think it’s something that could be done all at once, which would be a lot for the community and a lot for any organization to navigate successfully,” Lyons said.