On Sunday afternoon, I watched the most recent Metropolitan Planning Commission meeting on television.
Yep, I’m living large.
I knew that the MPC had approved the plan for One West Park Avenue, which would replace an ugly vacant lot at the corner of Park Avenue and Bull Street. I wrote positively about the plan last month after attending a presentation by designers from Sottile & Sottile.
Even though I knew the outcome, I found myself drawn into the MPC discussion about parking issues.
One West Park Avenue will have 14 residential units and will provide 15 off-street parking spaces. No zoning variance was needed for that.
The development would also have one 800-square-foot commercial space. Under current zoning, that very modest unit would require three off-street spaces.
But consider that bustling businesses in the American Legion complex right across the street — including Brighter Day Natural Foods, Betty Bombers and The Sentient Bean — don’t have any off-street parking at all for customers.
I live about five blocks south of Forsyth Park and lobbied for the Mid-City Rezoning adopted in 2005. We worked hard to minimize parking requirements for the sake of economic vitality and greater residential density.
In my neighborhood, nonresidential uses of less than 2,500 square feet don’t require any off-street parking spaces at all. When off-street parking is required by the ordinance, credit is given for abutting on-street spaces.
I live next to a property with four commercial spaces and three residential condos. No off-street parking was required, nor should it have been.
On occasion, I can’t park in front of my house and have to snag a spot further down the block. Only a handful of times over the years have I been forced to park around the corner or in the one off-street space that I have off the lane.
Sure, there are parking crunches on some blocks in the neighborhood when Arnold Hall is filled with SCAD students, but small commercial establishments are not part of the problem.
At last week’s MPC meeting, Hugh Golson — a neighbor of One West Park Avenue and the former chair of the Historic District Board of Review — made several interesting comments about parking.
Golson was clearly not concerned at all about the parking variance and is enthusiastic about the development.
But Golson noted the parking problems in the neighborhood due to the large number of festivals in Forsyth Park.
He added that when he was a child, there was angled parking on Bull Street from Park Avenue to Victory Drive.
If we had angled parking there again, we could slow traffic, increase the parking inventory for those large events and set the stage for considerably more investment along the corridor.
City Talk appears every Sunday and Tuesday. Bill Dawers can be reached via billdawers@comcast.net and http://www.billdawers.com. Send mail to 10 E. 32nd St., Savannah, GA 31401.