City to move forward with parking lot off First Street
The city will be moving forward with constructing a gravel parking lot near downtown in the coming months after their design for the space was approved by the landowners for the new lot, The St. Joe Company.
The lot will be located at the intersection of First Street and Langston Drive, next to the CVS. It will offer dozens more parking spaces to the city, which residents and business owners say are much needed.
“We did get approval for the new parking lot. We got that approved through the St. joe Company, so we’re moving forward with the new parking lot by the CVS on the corner of Langston Drive,” City Manager Jim Anderson told the city commissioners at their most recent meeting.
The city will be using gravel from the Maddox Park walking paths to cover the new parking lot, with Maddox Park’s paths to be paved.
The new parking lot is one of several solutions the city is pursuing to combat ongoing parking-related issues.
Jake Richards, the chief of the Port St. Joe Police Department, is in the process of drafting a parking ordinance for the city, which he expects to bring before the board at their May 2 meeting.
“I’ve been trying to meet with everyone who will be involved with that before I bring it before (the commissioners),” Richards said at the April 18 meeting.
The ordinance will have to undergo two public hearings before it is passed by the city commissioners. Richards said he aimed to have it ready for its first reading at the city’s May 2 meeting.
Meet the Editor
David Adlerstein, The Apalachicola Times’ digital editor, started with the news outlet in January 2002 as a reporter.
Prior to then, David Adlerstein began as a newspaperman with a small Boston weekly, after graduating magna cum laude from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He later edited the weekly Bellville Times, and as business reporter for the daily Marion Star, both not far from his hometown of Columbus, Ohio.
In 1995, he moved to South Florida, and worked as a business reporter and editor of Medical Business newspaper. In Jan. 2002, he began with the Apalachicola Times, first as reporter and later as editor, and in Oct. 2020, also began editing the Port St. Joe Star.