BRADENTON BEACH – One of four paid parking lots owned by Shawn Kaleta was brought into compliance by the city’s Sept. 9 deadline for adherence to several requirements.
The applicants opted to close the remaining three lots at 102 Third St. N., 206 Bay Drive N. and 207 Church Ave.
Seven months after the city commission conditionally approved a one-year temporary use permit for paid parking at 101 Bridge St., all requirements there have been met, according to city Building Official Darin Cushing.
City commissioners voted unanimously on Sept. 5 to remove the sidewalk installation stipulation for the temporary use permits at Kaleta’s paid parking lots on Third Street and Bay Drive.
Sam Negrin, manager of Beach to Bay Investments Inc., a Kaleta-owned entity, told commissioners at the Sept. 5 meeting that Kaleta plans to build homes on the lots and said permits will be submitted within a couple of months.
“The permit packages are being worked on at this point,” Negrin said.
“The applicants for the temporary use parking lot permits came to last Thursday’s commission meeting to ask for a modification of their stipulations, essentially to not install sidewalks on the Third Street and Bay Drive lots as was originally stipulated,” Cushing wrote in a Sept. 11 email to The Sun. “The commission agreed, and that stipulation was removed.”
But on Sept. 9, Cushing said the applicants emailed city staff informing them that they now intended to terminate the operation of paid parking lots at those lots as well as the Church Avenue lot.
The parking lot stipulations from the Feb. 15 commission approval of the Bridge Street parking lot include no entrance or exit from Bridge Street, the installation of directional arrows, landscaping less than 3 feet high, a sidewalk north of Third Street South to hook into the corner sidewalk on Gulf Drive, trolley benches and a slab, and black and white signage, in addition to review and approval of the site plan by the building official. The one-year temporary use permit runs through Feb. 15, 2025.
In an Aug. 1 letter to Kaleta, Cushing wrote that he intended to barricade the lots on Aug. 9 with a permanent closure deadline of Sept. 6 if all the stipulations had not been met. The deadline was extended to Sept. 9 to allow for the repair of a leaking artesian well at 101 Bridge St.
The parking lots were barricaded by the city on Aug. 9, but reopened the following day after intervention by Kaleta’s Bradenton attorney, Louis Najmy.
