It’s one parking lot.
It’s not the beginning of the end of our small-town quality of life.
It’s one privately owned parking lot, purchased as part of the Vero Beach Financial Center by an investment group that spent nearly $7 million to acquire the downtown complex in November.
It’s one privately owned lot – located on Old Dixie Highway, across from the Kilted Mermaid and Fishack – that was built to provide on-site parking to the tenants of the two office buildings to its immediate north.
And at the moment, it’s the only downtown lot where the public must pay to park.
So let’s not overreact.
Yes, this is a first – or at least the first time a paid-parking system has been installed here since the city leaders ordered the removal of street-side meters decades ago.
And, yes, it’s understandable some folks are worried that putting up the pay stations moves us another step closer to the South Florida sprawl we continue to fend off. The property’s new owners, after all, are based in North Miami, and they’ve leased the lot to Global Parking Systems of Deerfield Beach.
But unless this pay-to-park lot turns enough of a profit to justify Global’s investment, it’s unlikely we’ll see another one any time soon.
Consider: The pay-to-park system was installed two weeks ago and, thus far, the owners of both the Kilted Mermaid and Fishack say they’ve seen few cars using the lot – the lone exception being last Friday, when early evening thunderstorms rolled through the area.
That’s not surprising, especially with Global charging $4 per hour to park there.
“You pay that kind of money to park in downtown Miami or Fort Lauderdale,” Kilted Mermaid co-owner Linda Moore said, “but that’s a lot for downtown Vero Beach.”
For years, free parking downtown and along Ocean Drive has been as much a part of our community’s Mayberry-like charm as the height restrictions Vero places on its buildings.
So for outsiders to come in and charge an exorbitant hourly fee to park a car in their downtown lot – starting at 5 p.m. daily, customers may pay using cash, credit card or a mobile-device application – shows these people have no feel for Vero Beach.
To be sure, some folks will pay, particularly during our busy season, when part-time residents and tourists flock to our town.
Some will do so because they have difficulty walking. Some will do so when it rains. Others have the financial means to put convenience over cost.
Most people, though, will opt to park in the limited spaces along the street or in the free lots nearby – across from Jetson’s and the American Icon Brewery, or at the Freshman Learning Center.
Still, with the Kilted Mermaid opening for business at 5 p.m., co-owner Rick Norry, concedes, “We feel bad for our customers.”
To ease the sting, Norry and Moore are offering to cover the first $5 of the parking costs by deducting it from their customers’ tabs.
However, they said several customers have declined their goodwill gesture.
“We’re getting tremendous support from our customers,” Norry said.
Sounding noticeably more concerned was Fishack owner Mitchell Weiss, whose restaurant is open from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. and relies on a customer base that tends to be older than the Kilted Mermaid’s clientele.
“They’re drawing from a different demographic,” Weiss said. “Their customers can say, ‘We won’t park there, and we’ll walk.’ A lot of my customers aren’t going to do that. So it’s not a good situation for me. It’s definitely going to hurt my business.
“Where did they come up with $4 an hour, anyway?”
A Global representative said last week the company set the rate after conducting a study.
Allen Chelminski, who heads the partnership that owns the property, said his group’s priority was to make sure the lot provided sufficient parking for the office buildings’ tenants, many of whom had complained that they often returned from lunch to find their spaces taken by visitors to other downtown businesses.
For that reason, Global has assigned to the lot a uniformed attendant to prevent non-tenants from parking there during the business day.
“What Global is providing there,” Chelminski said, “is better for everybody.”
The owners of the Kilted Mermaid and Fishack disagree, though they say they don’t object to the property owners charging people to park in the lot. Their problem is with the cost.
In fact, the restaurant owners – along with Michael Rechter, who opened the nearby American Icon Brewery in 2017 – tried to renegotiate with Chelminski’s group the terms of the parking agreement they had with the previous owner.
And for good reason: Last year, the three restaurateurs each paid $1,000 per month so their customers could park in the lot, even though it was often used by downtown visitors who didn’t patronize their establishments.
Chelminski’s group refused to take less, however, and the restaurateurs stopped paying, prompting the property’s new owners to lease the lot to Global.
While Rechter defended the property owners’ decision to charge for parking – he cited the costs of maintaining and insuring the lot – he believes $3 per hour would be far more palatable to local customers.
“What they’re doing is commonplace in a lot of cities with vibrant downtowns, and not just in South Florida,” said Rechter, whose brewery has nearly 50 on-site spaces and relied on the financial center’s lot only for overflow parking.
He predicted we’ll eventually see more paid parking in Vero Beach, where the City Council has hired a local consulting firm to study its parking challenges.
But when asked if Vero Beach would embrace a pay-to-park recommendation, Mayor Val Zudans replied, “I think most of the public believes that paid parking would go against the culture of our community …”
So let’s not overreact.
