Usually, the Downtown Development Review Board evaluates proposals for apartment buildings, streetscape improvements and other major projects.
Sometimes, it’s just a parking lot — and unraveling a paper trail of rezoning that goes back more than 15 years.
That was the case Thursday when the board approved a surface parking lot at 601 E. Adams St., on the west side of Hogans Creek, between Catherine and Palmetto streets.
The owner, Duval County Land Trust, applied for exceptions to Downtown surface parking lot landscaping requirements.
It also sought from the board, acting as the planning commission for Downtown, authorization to use the property as a parking lot, which had not been obtained by the previous owner before it was purchased by the trust in a foreclosure sale.
Attorney Wyman Duggan, representing the owner, said the property has been used as a parking lot since at least 1977. He produced an aerial photograph from that year that showed numerous vehicles parked on the 7.42-acre site.
In 2001, the property was zoned as a Planned Unit Development, which allowed a commercial surface parking lot with 614 spaces. At the time, the property was leased to Central Parking and was a parking lot.
The property was rezoned in 2006 to Commercial Residential Office. That designation allows use as a parking lot only after an exception is approved by the city.
In 2010, the city enacted new regulations for surface parking lots Downtown that included landscape and streetscape standards.
One change was that existing parking lots, if left unimproved, would be deemed as meeting the standards until purchased by a new owner.
The trust bought the parking lot in November 2012.
Duggan said the owners want to conform to the standards and sought the landscaping exceptions due to environmental issues.
Decades ago, when East Bay Street was a maritime shipping district with docks, piers and warehouses, the property was used for disposal of hazardous waste.
The site was paved over to seal the contaminants and excavating the parking lot to plant trees and shrubs would not be advised, Duggan said.
“The whole site was used as an industrial waste dump for decades. We don’t want to break the cap,” he said.
Duggan also pointed out the property is not suitable for vertical development since the ramps for the Hart Bridge were built above the property.
Its location — between the jail, the Sulzbacher Center for homeless people and Hogans Creek — also diminishes the property’s value for development.
“A surface parking lot is the highest and best use of this property,” Duggan said.
The owner, he said, intends to sell short-term parking during events at Veterans Memorial Arena, the Baseball Grounds of Jacksonville and EverBank Field.
Duggan said there’s been a “conceptual” discussion of offering spaces in the lot for daily, weekly and monthly parking for people who work Downtown.
Approval for use as a parking lot and the landscape exception was granted with the condition that trees on the site be inventoried and, if more tree coverage is needed to conform with standards, more trees will be planted along the perimeter of the property.
In addition, when parking space stripes are painted on the pavement, the layout must allow traffic to flow through the lot and include a driving lane at least 20 feet wide between each group of 30 parking spaces.
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