City Council Establishes Parking Fees for Future Developments in Gateway Overlay District

The City of Miami Springs City Council passed a resolution on Monday, June 17, 2022, establishing a Parking Fee for any on-street parking used to satisfy the parking requirements by any developer building in the Gateway Overlay District.

GATEWAY OVERLAY DISTRICT
ON-STREET PARKING FEES:

This means, if your project requires 51 parking spaces, but you only have room for 50 parking spaces on your property, you can use on-street parking as a solution and pay $30,000 for one parking space.  Those funds will then be collected in a Parking Development Fund and used to help create new parking within the Central Business District.

Let’s take the example of One Curtiss Parkway. According to the Langan Parking Study used for the downtown development at One Curtiss Parkway, it says “The development will provide 94 parking spaces on-site and will use 47 on-street spaces.”  If the fee schedule approved last night had been put in place before the One Curtiss Parkway project was approved, the fees would have added up to:

• $600,000 for the first 20 spaces
• $1,080,000 for the next 27 spaces
• $1,680,000 for all 47 on-street parking spaces cited in the Langam study

The Langam Study then has a conflicting number and says, “We prepared a shared-parking analysis and found that the proposed mixed-use development will require 121 parking spaces.”  For the record, we don’t believe 51 apartments and 15 retail spots will only use 121 parking spaces, but let’s indulge the City Administration and assume that figure to be accurate.  Take the 121 total parking spaces minus the 94 spots in the garage and you’re still talking about 27 on-street parking spaces.  How much could the City have collected using this smaller figure had they established a parking fee?

• $600,000 for the first 20 spaces
• $280,000 for the next 7 spaces
• $880,000 for 27 on-street parking spaces 

As we’ve stated before, the City Administration approved the project at One Curtiss Parkway without assessing a parking fee as required by the Gateway Overlay District.  To be fair, the City Council had never established a parking fee.  But as we’ve said before, the City Administration (including the prior City Attorney, the City Manager, and the City Planner) knew a fee needed to be applied.  All the City Administration needed to do was to ask Council for direction (as they did last night) as to what that fee should be.

I applaud Mayor Mitchell and this City Council for stepping up and addressing these gaps and issues.  We are grateful for their diligence in rectifying issues with the Gateway Overlay District.

However, in approximately two to three years (if not sooner), we should see the new development at One Curtiss Parkway populated near capacity with both residents and businesses.  That’s when reality (and not parking studies that discounted 20% of the parking for mass transit) will take effect.  That’s also when we’ll see an even more urgent call by businesses and residents for more parking.

Unfortunately, the City of Miami Springs never charged or collected any parking fees on the One Curtiss Parkway Project.  As a result what could have been anywhere from $880,000 to $1.68 million was never collected towards a Parking Development Fund.  In other words, if the City attempts to create new parking like buying a lot, creating a garage, adding angle parking to Curtiss Parkway and converting it to one lane southbound, converting Westward to one lane only with angled parking, or any other project that would increase parking will begin with tax payer dollars instead of anywhere from $880,000 to $1.68 million in fees that could have been collected at the One Curtiss Parkway project, but never were thanks to a City Administration that never seemed to have a desire to charge the developers at One Curtiss Parkway the parking fee that was called for under the Gateway Overlay District ordinance.