SRIA studies parking garage
Cost of beach structure is near $8 million

Published - May, 10, 2007 Pensacola News Journal

SRIA studies parking garage
Cost of beach structure is near $8 million


Jamie Page
jepage@pnj.com

Building a 480-space parking garage on Pensacola Beach is estimated to cost about $7.78 million.

It's the first cost estimate the Santa Rosa Island Authority has seen for building such a garage. It was presented to them at Wednesday night's board meeting by Dave Hemphill, an engineer for Baskerville-Donovan Inc., which contracts engineering services for the Island Authority.

Many SRIA board members and island residents have agreed more parking is needed to accommodate tourist and visitor traffic.

As proposed, it would be a four-level garage built on the northwest corner of the existing Casino Beach parking area.

SRIA Chairman Vernon Prather's first reaction was that the Island Authority doesn't have that kind of money, "so we're going to have to find a funding source."

Board member John Peacock said building a garage "is just part of the overall vision for Pensacola Beach," and funding shouldn't be a major issue.

"There is plenty of money to get if we market it the right way so that private developers can see the benefit," Peacock said.

The project would mean slightly relocating a portion of Pensacola Beach Boulevard and Via de Luna where the two intersect in front of Casino Beach.

A traffic circle would be built at the intersection to allow traffic to move more easily through the intersection.

The 480-space garage could be built at roughly $13,000 per space, totaling $6.24 million. The other $1.54 million in the estimated total includes sitework improvements, paving, traffic signal modifications, landscaping and building the traffic circle.

Hemphill gave examples of the costs of other local parking garages built in recent years:

· $23,750 per space: Built in 2007, Navy Federal Credit Union garage has 1,180 spaces and includes offices and a mechanical tower.

· $6,000-$7,000 per space: The M.C. Blanchard Judicial Center garage was built in 2001.

· $10,250 per space: Built in 2007, the Escambia County Courthouse garage has 489 spaces.

Hemphill said some aesthetic changes could be made to the proposal to get it closer to the per space cost of the Judicial Center.

When asked how many spaces it would take to accommodate all peak season traffic to the beach, Hemphill said, "If you designed for the peak season, we would have to pave this whole island."

In other business:

The Island Authority granted David Brannen, the developer of the Best Western Hotel on the beach, a special exception to increase the building density of his hotel project from 30 units per acre to 50.

That density already has been approved for the other 11 hotels on Pensacola Beach.