If Traffic stalls Fort Myers garage vote
A failure to agree on the traffic impact of a new downtown Fort Myers parking garage again has prevented a decision on the project.
The $15 million, 834-car garage that would provide parking for the new Lee County Justice Center came up Monday night for the second time this month at a Fort Myers City Council meeting. And once again, after about a half-hour of debate, city and county officials decided to continue the issue until the lawyers and the transportation experts on both sides can agree on the impact the garage might have on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
“We don’t want to wordsmith this ordinance tonight,” Mayor Jim Humphrey said.
None of the council members opposed his suggestion, and the issue will come back for discussion and an expected vote Feb. 4 — a vote that will determine whether the county gets permits from the city to build the garage.
There is a waiting list for spaces at the City of Palms and Main Street garages, making parking an apparent need city officials are trying to address.
But this new garage is a Lee project, and city officials want the county to contribute $4.5 million toward improvements on MLK Boulevard, a major east-west corridor through Fort Myers that is clogged with traffic in the mornings and evenings.
New turn lanes on the two-lane road, city officials have said, could help relieve congestion.
The county’s $4.5 million share would account for 27 percent of the $16 million- plus city officials believe they need to improve MLK.
“There is no way we’re going to solve the problem on MLK,” city engineer Saeed Kazemi said. “So we need to ease it up. We need to work with each other to try to find a solution.”
The money used to improve a road so it can handle the traffic a new development brings is known as concurrency.
And county officials do not believe a parking garage has anything to do with concurrency.
“There’s magic to those words we put in ordinances,” County Attorney David Owen said. “A parking garage does not generate trips.”
That’s a Lee policy from which county officials apparently will not budge, even though a consultant they hired has warned that the garage would make traffic worse on MLK. Michael Spitz of McMahan Transportation Engineers and Planners has twice told city planners that the garage is a concurrency issue, according to city records of planning board meetings.
“That’s why the county shouldn’t be able to come in here and do what they want,” City Attorney Grant Alley said.
County officials can’t — at least they can’t build the garage without a city permit, and they would have to continue using the lots they lease on Liberty Street and a shuttle for jurors, visitors and employees of the justice center.
Jim Lavender, the county’s public works director, asked the council to consider issuing the permit, and then construction on the garage could start.construction on the garage started next January, Lavender later said, it would be ready by the end of the year, about the same time the justice center is scheduled to open.
City leaders just were not willing to take the risk that an agreement might not be in place to deal with potential impacts to MLK while the county gets permission to build.
Councilman Mike Flanders, who represents the downtown area, believes an agreement will be ready for a vote come February.
“I’m confident we’ll have language drafted close enough that we’ll adopt some version.”
Lavender remained skeptical.
“That’s hard to predict,” he said.
Money quote: “There’s magic to those words we put in ordinances,” County Attorney David Owen said.
It seems that this article illustrates that impact fees are good for the goose, but the county believes they are not good for the gander.!
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