By Marvin G. Cortner
Editor

Osceola County government is continuing to move forward on providing additional parking for Courthouse Square in Kissimmee and a contract for designing a new 900-space parking garage is set to go before the County Commission in June.

Frank Anderson, county general services division director, at the commission’s May 10 meeting said approval of a design contract would start a 10-month process to make the project “shovel ready.” Once construction starts, Anderson said, it would take nine months to build the parking garage, which would be on the block that contains the former Herring Carpet property between Emmett and Bryan streets east of the square.

Commissioners raised a number of questions about the project, asking whether county employees would have to pay for parking and if employees and others had to pay, would that create a parking shift to parking on city streets and in city parking lots. There also was a question about whether the city would install parking meters on city streets and in city lots if the county charged for parking in the new garage and in its lots.

Anderson said the county currently has 1,200 parking spaces around the square, but that it is approximately 600 spaces below current building code requirements. Putting up the new garage would take care of the shortage and provide an additional 300-space cushion to accommodate growth, which could include parking for a new county administration building, he said.

County officials in the past considered a number of options to deal with turning the current county administration building over to the county court system, including putting up a new administration building near the square or putting a new facility on the nearby county-owned Beaumont site off Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. There was even discussion of constructing a new facility at the county government complex on East U.S. Highway 192. The consensus, however, has been to keep the new building downtown.

According to Interim County Manager Don Fisher, the commission in the past delayed the contract for the parking garage’s design pending a final decision on whether a new administration building would be built downtown.

“If we stay downtown, we will need the 900-space garage,” Fisher said. “The city will do what is needed to mesh with us.”

Fisher added that the city could put parking meters on streets, if that was determined as a need, and that city officials want to be “partners with the county” on dealing with the parking issue.

“The funding is in place for the parking garage,” Fisher said, adding that parking revenues would be a secondary benefit and would help pay off the debt.

County officials also discussed but did not take action on whether to immediately begin demolishing any county-owned buildings and construct gravel parking lots on the footprint of the proposed parking garage to create parking space sooner.

Once the design contract is assigned for the parking garage, the county would then begin a traffic study of the area around the courthouse and downtown area to determine how the parking garage would impact vehicle flow, especially in the morning and at the end of the business day and what changes to streets might be needed.

County Chairman Fred Hawkins Jr. this week Monday said as far as he knows a final decision on the location of a new administration building has not been made. He also said that given the economy it might be prudent to delay building the parking garage.

Kissimmee Mayor Jim Swan on Tuesday said he had met with county officials several months ago and had assured them that the city would “assist in any way possible” with any traffic routing or parking issues that might come into play. He also said commissioners “didn’t show much enthusiasm” for putting up a new administrative building in any place but at Courthouse Square.

“It behooves the county and city to work together; a lot of coordinating would have to happen,” Swan said.

The county has not yet acquired all the property it would need to build the parking garage and is still negotiating with some property owners.

Other commission news

The commission on Monday approved a request on the consent agenda to add three sites to its active acquisition list for the Environmental Lands Conservation Program, with the largest site 1,123 acres on the east side of Lake Tohopekaliga.

The program uses an ad valorem tax to purchase and maintain environmentally important land, with purchased sites used mostly for passive recreation.

According to county documents, the three sites were:

• The Whaley property, 1,123 acres south of Goblet’s Cove, west of the Florida’s Turnpike and Old Canoe Creek Road and north of Kissimmee Park Road. The property has 1.5 miles of lake shoreline and a portion is designated as sovereign submerged land. There are five single-family homes on the parcel. This property is part of the Edgewater development of regional impact.

• The Margaret Vickery Ranch is comprised of 132 acres on the south and southeastern border of Coon Lake, north of Bass Highway and east of Grouper Street near the city of St. Cloud. The property has 1.2 miles of shoreline along Coon Lake, which is private.

• The Long property, comprised of 5.2 acres, is south of Bass Highway, north of Old Melbourne Highway, east of Pine Grove Road and east of U.S. Highway 192. This site, surrounded by the Lake Lizzie Preserve, has 150 feet of shoreline along Lake Lizzie.

The commission also approved providing $10,000 in Law Enforcement Trust funds to Grace Landing, a home opened to serve adult males 18 to 23 years old who have aged out of the state foster care system. The home is operated by a nonprofit of the same name.

The commission, however, delayed a vote to evict Wendy Makinson from a county-owned home at 815 Neptune Road. The county’s lease with Makinson ended May 23, 2009, and she requested additional time to stay in the home and to negotiate the purchase of the property back from the county, which the county obtained but did not need for the widening of Neptune Road, according to county documents.

The additional time ended March 28 and Makinson has not vacated the property.