South Siesta businesses question parking capacity

On Friday, a large yellow excavator played tug-of-war with a large pile of rubble over a piece of mangled metal along Stickney Point Road.

The pile of debris was all that was left after crews demolished an old car wash to make room for Daiquiri Deck’s second location on Siesta Key, to be located at 1249 Stickney Point Road.

Just as the machine grappled with the pile of rubble, area business owners are grappling with a familiar problem— parking.

Crews plan to construct a three-story commercial development with 40 parking spaces next to CB’s Island Outfitters by spring 2017. A coffee shop is also included in the plans for the project, the newest addition to Siesta Key’s smaller, southern commercial district near the corner of Stickney Point and Midnight Pass Road.

Property owner Mason Tush is hopeful the new businesses will give the “little village” a foothold to carve out its own identity on Siesta Key, independent of Siesta Key Village.

“By adding this, the hope is that it will keep these people vacationing on this side of the Key down here,” Tush said.

Despite Tush’s hopes, there is some concern a Daiquiri Deck will not blend with the culture of the commercial area.

“I’m all for everyone making the highest and best use for their property,” Clayton’s Siesta Grille owner Clayton Thompson said. “But it’s a little out of the mainstream for what this area is.”

Though Thompson is impressed by the design of the project, he is hesitant to fully endorse increased development on south Siesta Key.

For the most part, his worries aren’t related to the specifics of the Daiquiri Deck project. He is concerned the area does not have adequate infrastructure to facilitate increased growth.

“The county has not done anything to provide any parking down here,” Thompson said.

An excavator rumbled just down the street as Thompson pointed out a vacant lot next to Siesta Key Storage from his restaurant Friday morning.

“The county should have bought that and turned it into a parking lot,” he said.

Limited parking is available at Beach Access 12, but Thompson thinks larger-scale accommodations are necessary as interest in the Key increases. He says he struggles to preserve parking for customers, and beachgoers struggle to find a parking spot near the beach.

As of now, the county says there are no plans to increase parking on south Siesta Key or assess the need for additional parking, which architect Mark Smith believes places the responsibility on developers to solve south Siesta’s parking problems.

Designing the new Daiquiri Deck, Smith worked backward by accounting for parking first and then calculating the square footage that would fit within the county’s parking requirements.

“I squeezed in as many parking spaces as I could,” Smith said. “On Siesta Key, that’s really the only way you can do it.”

Despite questions regarding the area’s ability to accommodate future growth, Smith, like Tush, believes Daiquiri Deck’s addition is a step toward creating a defining identity in the little village.

“Based on my impression of the Stickney Point area, this is an asset,” Smith said.