The most consistent and predictable complaint heard from Historic City News readers in St Augustine, has to be parking — finding on-street parking can be a challenge. Available spots in managed lots often require a monthly pass, or are reserved for employees and business customers, or are being fraudulently occupied by former city officials using expired “free parking” passes.
Just because a parking lot is striped with individual city parking meters, or meters that accept the city’s “Park Now” card as payment, does not mean the city owns the property. The City of St Augustine leases many parking spaces from private owners — some of those lots occupy prime, buildable land in the historic preservation area.
One example is the city-metered parking lot that runs along the south-most end of Spanish Street, north from Treasury Street a little more than one block. This popular lot is busy all day and supports several long-time tenants on St George Street.
Although seemingly one parking lot; it is, in reality, the aggregation of several separate lots owned by five separate tax-paying entities, according to information collected from the St Johns County Property Appraiser’s website on Friday.
The north-most piece is owned by Robert E Giebeig Jr et al. Next, as you are heading south, is owned by Spanish Street HMR-LRS LLC. Then the Akras Family Enterprises LLC, followed by Eugenia Y Genovar Estate. Finally, the south most parcel as you reach Treasury Street, is registered to the Doris L Raab Trust.
Those little-publicized facts were made clear to one Historic City News reader, Susan Old, who reported last week that a large portion of the metered parking lot behind Pizza Time and the St George Tavern had changed hands.
“The meters now charge FOUR dollars per-hour, enforced 24 hours-a-day, 7 days-a-week, with no more free parking after 5:00 p.m. or on Sundays,” Old wrote. “Their new policy is towing instead of ticketing.”
As we looked further into her complaint, we observed adjacent parking spaces are still being maintained by the City of St Augustine. Those spaces cost $1.50 per hour or .50 per hour if you use a City issued “Park Now” card.
Old expressed concern that St Augustine tourists and out-of-town shoppers might unwittingly park in one of the spots at issue — accustomed to significantly cheaper adjacent parking. She says she wouldn’t want to be nearby when someone comes back to find that their vehicle has been towed because the meter had been unpaid for ten minutes.
“I personally am BOYCOTTING this lot – it has already caused some businesses to become slower than normal and made it very difficult for those who work on St. George Street to find reasonable parking near their place of business,” Old concluded.
Photo credits: © 2015 Historic City News contributed photograph
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