Parking Plan B

Now let’s look at Parking Plan B.  You will see that it has the same Beach Visitor Parking as Plan A.  This would be paid parking for daytrippers.  Once again, there is no parking on Ocean Blvd.

In Plan B, however, the Regulated Resident Only Parking area is much smaller.  Click on the maps to enlarge them and you will see this is the area between the red and yellow squiggly lines.  In other words, this is the area that is more than 500 feet but less than 1000 feet from the beach.

No daytrippers can park here.  Residents and homeowners with a decal or a tag can park in the right of way here and so can guests of residents or homeowners who get a tag from the city.

In the area labeled Unregulated, anyone can park in the right of way at any time.  So if a daytripper does not want to pay to park (or can’t because all the passes for that day are sold) and doesn’t mind walking more than 1000 feet to the beach, he can park anywhere in the yellow area.

Question:  If you drove here all the way from Moncks Corner and there was no paid parking, would you turn around and go home or would you stop to unload your stuff and kids on Palm Blvd and then have one person drive the car deep into the island to park it?

For the record, the following councilmembers voted for this option: Bergwerf, Bettelli, Buckhannon, Cronin, Ferencz, and Ward.

Parking Plan A

Please look at the above maps to fully understand this plan.  Clicking on the map will enlarge it for easier viewing.  Then hit the back button to return to this page.

Parking for daytrippers is labeled “Beach Visitor Parking” on the maps.  In city council meeting notes this is also called the “Beach Overlay District.”

The parking spots in the Beach Visitor Parking areas all meet the criteria called for in the beach management plan so the city can maintain eligibility for beach renourisment funding in the future.  The pay to park program would run from the end of May through the end of August between 9 am and 6 pm each day.  (More or less, as this could be adjusted by the city.)

The beach visitor parking would be paid parking and is designated by the red squiggly lines.  The details of paid parking are still to be worked out – and what BIG details they are!  So big, in fact, that the parking plan has been delayed yet another year.

All other parking would be “Regulated Resident Only Parking.”  All residents and homeowners would have a special decal or tag for their vehicle permitting them to park in the right of way.  NO daytripper could park here.

If you live here and plan to have more guests than your driveway can accommodate,  you would need to get some tags from the city to put on your guests cars so they could park in the right of way.

Question: How often do you have so many people at your house that some of them need to park in the right of way?  This is critical to think about as you decide if you like Plan A or Plan B.

For the record, Mike Loftus was the only councilmember to vote for this plan initially.

Council then went into executive session to receive information from the city attorney.  What this usually means is to get information on all the people that will or could sue the city because of a particular move made by council.

After the executive session, Plan A was supported by Carrol, Harrington and Loftus.

Finally, note that there is NO parking on Ocean Blvd, while Palm Blvd will be jammed with cars.

The next post will explain Plan B.

The Beach Management Plan

For the city to be eligible to receive state funds for beach renourishment, it must provide parking for the general public to access the beach.  Specifically, there must be 6 parking spaces for each 1/8 of a mile of beach and the spaces must be within 500 feet of the beach.

Because Wild Dunes does not provide parking to the general public it is not eligible for beach renourishment funding.

After 7 years, countless meetings and the hiring of an expensive consultant, the city came up with 2 possible solutions to the summer parking problem.  These plans were labeled Parking Plan A and Parking Plan B.

The next 2 posts with give details of each plan.

We have just learned that to implement the new parking plan the city will need to plant at least 320 new signs!  Now, instead of a sign every 40 feet telling you something you can’t do, we will now have one every 20 feet.

Councilmember Ferencz astutely commented that the IOP will soon by known as the Isle of Signs.  But worry not fair reader.  Because every councilmember is sworn to “fiscal conservatism or death by hari-kiri”, the signs will not be the nice, natural wooden ones you see on Sullivans Island, but the cheapest metal ones they can find.  It is all in keeping with our “North Charleston-by-the-Sea” motif that tells visitors we don’t really care about keeping our neighborhoods beautiful.  Don’t believe me, just look at our gorgeous gas station as you enter the island.  More on that in another post.

This post has been removed at the request of the Mayor of Palm Blvd.

Tired of having daytrippers park in front of your house in the easement? Just follow this dude’s lead when he built his mini-mansion.  Landscape it out through the easement right to the street.  Make it look nice (not like certain properties on the 28th block of Palm Blvd) and your neighbors will not complain and a daytripper will think twice about plowing over your expensive ornamental bush imported from Bali.

At the November 13, 2014 City Council meeting a motion was made to open up Ocean Blvd to visitor parking.  Currently no parking is permitted on any part of Ocean Blvd, a remnant from years past when there were no houses on the ocean side of the street and the side of the road was very sandy making it easy for cars to get stuck.  Thus the state made the road off limits to parking in the right-of-way.

Fast forward and we now have the road entirely built out with homes.  There are 148 homes on Ocean Blvd and 54 of them (36.5%) have rental licenses.  While the streets next to Ocean Blvd, most of which are inhabited by long term residents, have historically been jammed with daytripper’s cars, Ocean Blvd sat there empty because of a statute that no longer makes any sense and could be changed by city council.

Coucilmembers Bergwerf, Buckhannon, Carroll, Ward and Mayor Cronin voted to keep Ocean off-limits to beach parking. 

They say this will decrease the number of cars on the island!  Yeah, sure.  These cars will just move to some other residential area and park in the right of way, as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow.  The next time you are out and about, ride or walk down Ocean Blvd and you will note abundant parking with a lot of grass and not much sand in sight!  Then, contact one of the above councilmembers and ask them, “Just what were you thinking?”  It seems to this writer that everyone on the island should be treated the same.  No special privileges should be extended to certain out of town owners who have built massive rental homes in the the most prime locations.