OCEAN CITY — Mayor Rick Meehan this week vetoed an ordinance passed by the majority of the council last month authorizing tandem, or stacked, parking with a valet system for major downtown redevelopment projects including the proposed Margaritaville project.
The ordinance passed on a 5-1 vote, with Council President Matt James opposed and Councilman Frank Knight absent, would allow redevelopment projects to meet their minimum parking requirements by deploying tandem, or stacked, parking run by a comprehensive parking management system.
In simplest terms, if a redevelopment project for a hotel complex or a commercial use in the downtown area could not meet its minimum parking space requirements on-site, tandem parking, or spaces in which vehicles are stacked one behind the other, could be utilized as long as a comprehensive parking management plan, or valet service, for example, was in place. In other words, if a project required 100 parking spaces according to the code, 20% of them could be tandem, or stacked spaces, to meet the minimum requirement.
Ostensibly, the code amendment, if approved, would apply to any significant redevelopment project that can’t meet the parking requirements on-site, but the proposed amendment is somewhat specific to major projects already in the planning pipeline, including the Margaritaville project.
On Tuesday, Meehan sent a letter to James and City Clerk Diana Chavis vetoing the council’s approval of ordinance 2022-14, which allows for limited use of valet service-tandem parking for hotel, motel and commercial use in the downtown and upper downtown overlay districts.
Where u been Rickie????