Delray Beach considering downtown valet - WPTV

DELRAY BEACH, Fla. - When you go out on a Friday night, where do you park?

It was a battle in Delray Beach Friday, not necessarily to find a space, but whether the city should be in the business of valet parking.

The city sees a valet service as a way to make money and make the garage safer.

When Ros Gibson visits Delray Beach for museums and lunch, she has no problem parking and walking.

"Valet parking also usually takes you longer than driving in and parking yourself," said Gibson, of Boynton Beach.

But Downtown Development Authority board member Diane Franco has a different audience in mind when she sees the city hall's plan to create a valet parking service.

With 550 spaces in a four-floor garage that taxpayers paid about $16 million for, why not try to fill them?

"Take three or four attorneys that decide to have lunch together. They don't want to have to deal with that. They'd just rather valet park the car, have lunch," said Franco.

City staff say the service could be contracted out, although that is not discussed in documents the city provided to city commission.

Plans call for prices between $3 and $10. One prediction pegs a yearly profit of almost $20,000.

But money, even for a city that just went through a tough budget season, may not be enough of a reason.

One fear Mayor Woodie McDuffie has?

"It's something else that we have to manage," he said.

McDuffie says they might be unnecessarily competing with the numerous valets that work for restaurants on Atlantic Ave. - the ones that drive business right to restaurants' front doors.

"What I don't want to do is to create a competitive operation here with this set of valets competing against the valets that we have already got on Atlantic Avenue," said McDuffie.

Gibson says the city should stick to parking lots, not parking cars.

"There are other ways to make money," said Gibson.

This is all part of the city's effort to implement a parking plan that has been in the works for years.

Sometime in the next month, a meeting involving all the key players downtown will happen in a gymnasium right across the street from the garage.

The hope is to come up with answers regarding valet parking and other parking issues the city has on its plate.

15 Oct, 2011

--
Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNG45HoS9J2R9PEqD_JHpKxlG0MGgg&url=http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/region_s_palm_beach_county/delray_beach/delray-beach-considering-downtown-valet
~
Manage subscription | Powered by rssforward.com