Palm Beach scrutinizes free parking in its three business corridors
Palm Beach Daily News
Every day, residents, workers and visitors destined for the town’s three commercial corridors, engage in a first-come, first-serve battle for roughly 1,100 curbside parking spaces only about half of which can be had for free, at least for an hour or two.
The unrelenting pursuit of free parking spots has been a point of contention and escalating regulation for decades.
The result is a hodgepodge of parking zones that change from street to street and sometimes even multiple times within one block.
“I call the whole process that has gotten us to where we are ‘disjointed incrementalism’,” says Town Councilman Lew Crampton. “Someone had a great idea and someone else had a great idea. There was a logic to each one.”
Susan Salisbury
Special to the Daily News
Henry Morrison Flagler was a visionary, but even he probably could not have imagined what The Breakers, now a premier resort known worldwide, would become when he founded it 125 years ago.
Flagler, who made his fortune as a partner in the Standard Oil company and as a developer and railroad pioneer, opened the Palm Beach Inn on Jan. 16, 1896. It was the only oceanfront hotel south of Daytona Beach and attracted the famous people of its day including the Astors, Rockefellers, Carnegies and Vanderbilts.
Regular guests from his other nearby hotel, the 1,100-room Royal Poinciana, asked for rooms “down by the breakers.” When Flagler doubled the size of the inn for the 1901 season, he renamed the oceanfront resort The Breakers.
Palm Beach Daily News
Palm Beach is searching for a retail consultant that can help enhance shopping on the island with suggestions on filling dozens of empty storefronts and streamlining town code that might be blocking some stores from opening.
Town Council members agreed during a development review meeting Wednesday to issue a request for proposal to companies it hopes can turnaround what Planning and Zoning Committee Chairman Michael Ainslie called “the biggest crisis the town’s retail sector has ever faced.”
“We have over 40 vacant stores on Worth Avenue, its vias and the adjoining streets, including South County Road,” Ainslie said. “We also have an empty Neiman Marcus store that will never reopen as a department store again.”
of something that s too hot? i think a little of both. but obviously they do not stand by what the white nationalists represent. for the organization to do that, that was very brave of them, and we certainly applaud them for that. you say political. and there are a lot of groups who claim they re apolitical. oil companies say we don t have any political position. in fact, when you dip under the hood, look at them, they re doing all kinds of lobbying. this seems a little different, which is why it s interesting what you ve been up to. let me read what laurel baker did, palm beach chamber of commerce. also business oriented. quote, if you have a conscience, you re really condoning bad behavior by continuing to be there at mar-a-lago. look at your mission statement. are you living up to it.