“Never mind.”
Key West city officials have hit the brakes on an unpopular plan to build a new downtown parking garage at Simonton and Angela streets.
“The parking garage is on hold. That’s over. There’s no further discussions to be had,” Mayor Dee Dee Henriquez confirmed to the Keys Weekly on Feb. 9. “The city manager and staff had wanted to present their plan, hear people’s input and take the temperature of the public.”
It had been two weeks since three city executives pitched a $6 million, 85-space parking structure at a Jan. 27 workshop. ($4.2 million for the garage, plus $1.8 million for electric-vehicle charging stations, new public restrooms, new landscaping and bench seating in a courtyard.).
City Manager Brian L. Barroso, engineering director Doug Bradshaw and parking director John Wilkins got plenty of feedback at the workshop, which at times got heated as more than two dozen people objected to the project’s cost, location and impacts on traffic congestion. But attendees were most frustrated by what they saw as the city’s failure to address the frequent flooding in the area before forging ahead with a new, $6 million parking garage, which some worried would impede drainage and exacerbate flooding.
Barroso, Bradshaw and Wilkins repeatedly reminded residents the meeting was about the new parking structure. They said the flooding would be addressed, but by a different department and through a different series of meetings.
The parking garage proposal never made it to a city commission agenda for discussion or decision. By Feb. 6, Barroso had scrapped the parking garage proposal in response to the public’s opposition.
