The Gilchrist Potato Stix, and other visual snacks

Early Thursday morning, there were high winds across the island. They caused waves that washed away newly deposited sand. Those winds, which brought much-needed rain, rustled the yellow reflective sticks that are placed in the middle of the Gilchrist median between 5th and 4th streets. 

Were they an art installation? Of a sort!

Everyone knows these yellow sticks, placed willy-nilly, and oh so creatively to keep cars from driving through the Gilchrist median. They best resemble Potato Stix found in a can. You know, those tasty little yellow hard fries of varying length. Head to the back section of Hudson’s Grocery, where all the good stuff is, and there is actually a brand of them, Pic-Nic Shoestring Potatoes. Quite tasty, though their nutritional value would not be to the liking of our new HHS secretary, unless tallow fried.

At some point these “Potato Stix” were placed there to keep cars from driving through the middle of the grass. They look awful. Nearby are various signs, of a visual quality appealing perhaps to a state prison sign worker, preventing overnight parking. Just in the circle at 5th Street is a marker to our island’s veterans. No one sees fit to hoist a flag there. No one cares. Not a whit. It was like this before the hurricanes as well, but the Historical Society did get the plaque reinstalled after Ian.

That is what we think of Gilchrist, this supposed beautiful gem of a street in the middle of the island. No one has recently take the time to raise a flag, or to put up decent signage, or figure out a handsome way to keep cars from crossing the median, which is planted in SUV-dentable coconut palms.

What do these coconuts telegraph?

Let us go down the street, to what many individual residents have done to this public space. Over the years, many good citizens have nicely planted grass or put shell in front of their houses along the street, to allow public parking for churches and visitors. But others have planted odd shrubs, to their liking, to block out anyone. Even a Florida Lennar or Pulte development, so derided by many here, has a better “look” than these shrub installations. The curb mounds remind one of Staten Island, where each house is its own lair, a defensive castle against the hordes who dare to go to church, or to take their kids to the beach. Public space and a century of a tradition in parking be damned.

On March 18, this island will hear, in public, at a Lee County Board of County Commissioners meeting, a parking discussion for Gasparilla Island. Or so folks were told Tuesday.

There is little encouragement in this whole process. It has all happened outside of any open meetings. People were talking to their commissioner, and now the process has been turned over to Lee County staff to present something to us. If you send an email, who listens to the points made?

But back to the Potato Stix.

Is this really a median? No, its not, because it doesn’t have any curbing. People have parked on the grass there for a century. A century. Remember that the First Baptist Church is individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Searching in the Lee County Code, you can find just about anything you want to prove a point, in assorted places. There is even a church parking allowance for grass! Of course, it is meant for churches that have their own big acreage, but parking on grass is ok by some:

Parking on grass. Up to 50 percent of the parking spaces required for the sanctuary or main assembly hall of a place of worship may be provided as parking on grass, provided the regulations set forth in the following sections of division 26 of this article, pertaining to off-street parking requirements, are met.

Lee County actually does have a provision for parking on grass, in Sec. 34-2016. Laws prove what you need:

Temporary parking lots. Temporary parking lots do not need to be surfaced, and may be maintained as a grass area or in a dustfree manner. (See section 34-2022.) 

There are all manner of tangential exceptions:

The Director is authorized to permit high turnover parking lots (including parking lot aisles), to meet the surfacing standards for low turnover parking lots (section 34-2017(b), above) under the following circumstances: The property is not located in the intensive development or central urban land use categories; the proposed parking lot will contain no more than 25 spaces; The proposed alternative surface will be adequately drained; and The proposed alternative surface is consistent with the uses and the parking lot surfaces in the surrounding neighborhood.

Laws, code and rules can be interpreted. For instance, the occasional use by The Gasparilla Inn guests and employees of the “closed” 5th Street parking area. Or the special parking zoning waiver that Lee County Parks and Recreation gave itself, when it allowed the addition of a new theater at the Community Center, even as it made the Boca Grande Health Clinic go through two years of permitting, still unfinished.

For parking, special permits for events such as weddings or Ash Wednesday, is not a solution. Last year, a 5K, which had been held on the island for decades, was stopped because Lee County required a traffic study, in the tens of thousands of dollars. We are not sure what traffic needed to be studied. The traffic either goes around the runners, or not. The “study” used to be traffic cones, put up an hour before the 5K. No one died.

Last week, Lighthouse United held their Strawberry Festival. There was one volunteer who shepherded the street closing of just one street, for one event. It was not easy. People who wait over a month for a building permit will not trust having to get a permit for Palm Sunday, or a funeral.

Take a look at the uneven allowances for curb shrubbery, and the “rules” and see if anyone feels like this is a process that can be trusted. 

We are hopeful, though.

Over the years, there have been many compromises, including parallel parking on both sides of each side of Gilchrist, and removal of all curb plantings. They have all been rejected, for reasons unknown. Which makes one think the only real message is for visitors, other than homeowners, to keep out.

Garland Pollard is editor of the Boca Beacon. Email letters and comments to editor@bocabeacon.com.