- September 11, 2024
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Flagler Beach’s Flagler Fish Company is getting an extensive seating expansion, despite concerns about a lack of parking available.
The Flagler Beach Commission unanimously approved the expansion request that would bring the restaurant’s available seating up to 187, according to the proposed site plan submitted to Flagler Beach. The restaurant is located at 180 S. Daytona Ave. and has 10 parking spaces.
The restaurant’s proposed plans, among other changes, move the spots so that all 10 parking spaces are on the restaurant’s south side. The east side of the building would become a paved and walled seating area, complete with a dog-friendly section. According to the plans, this would add 50 seats outdoors.
According to calculations by the city, Planner Lupita McClenning told the commission that the Land Development Regulations would require 38 parking spaces to accommodate the 187 seats, including expansion.
Beyond the current 10 spaces, the remaining 28 would be reliant on city-owned parking spaces, including the two city spaces in front of the restaurant’s east side.
A 2018 ordinance allows businesses to rely on city parking spaces for new development.
But City Commissioner Eric Cooley said he had issues with continuing to approve parking changes that could impact the area’s quality of life without first updating the language in the code and parking calculations.
The code requires restaurants to have parking spaces of either one space per 150 square feet or of one parking space per three fixed seats. Businesses in the downtown area who can’t meet the requirement can receive credit through using the parking pool.
Cooley said the code is reliant on how many “fixed” seats are in a restaurant when determining the ratio, instead of just how many seats there are in total. He said the definition of “fixed seats” is arbitrary
“So we have staff interpreting plans as fixed or not fix seats, when it’s not shown [on the plans] to be fixed or not fixed seats,” he said.
Cooley said using the vague language in the code to make these calculation means that the city will have inaccurate numbers of how many city-owned parking spots are available in the parking pool program.
Ironically, he said, with these calculations, there should still be enough parking spaces in that area’s parking pool, but only because calculations for other developments were also done incorrectly. As of June 24, there are 135 total on-street spaces available in the parking pool calculations.
“We cannot continue to make decisions that are going to have a negative effect on quality of life because of wording subjectivity,” Cooley said. “This potentially could have a negative effect on quality of life issues on that side of town.”
Email sierra@observer localnews.com.
