New Parking Garage Coming To St. Pete Beach

On December 13th, the city commissioners unanimously voted and approved a conditional use permit for the Postcard Inn to build a parking garage and conference center immediately north of its current hotel location at 6300 Gulf Blvd.

PCI must still submit a site plan for the project, which also will require City Commission approval.

PCI’s New Parking Garage on St. Pete Beach

By Bob McClure from the Tampa Bay Newspapers

The proposed parking garage would have four levels and 346 spaces. The structure would also include 4,460 square feet of meeting room space on the ground floor.

The painted concrete structure, which would stand 38 feet tall, would be built on property PCI owns at the southwest corner of Gulf Boulevard and 64th Avenue. A retail strip center currently uses the site and would be razed for the new building.

Initial plans, which were approved by the city’s Planning and Zoning Board, called for ingress and egress to and from the parking garage to be off 64th Avenue. But residents of the nearby Silver Sands condominiums complained too much traffic would be exiting the parking garage northbound on Sunset Way past their homes, despite a traffic study that showed 11 cars per hour at peak time would come and go from the parking garage.

Silver Sands residents also expressed concern over a pedestrian beach access next to an emergency access on the north side of the hotel, next to Building A of Silver Sands. They were also concerned because initial plans called for the parking garage to be open to the public when not being used by PCI patrons. Opening the lot to the public, they argued, would increase the amount of public drunkenness on the beach.

Bob Sauerwine, general manager of the Postcard Inn said, “We’ve increased security guards, especially during our high demand times,” he said. “We don’t allow coolers. We don’t allow tents to go through our property onto the beach. It’s the same thing Beachcomber does and the same thing Howard Johnson does. So what do people do? They take the path of least resistance to get to the public beach.”

St. Pete Beach’s New Parking Garage Renderings

Before

After

Before

After

Location

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