11 Mar West Palm Beach should cater to people, not cars

By Timothy Hullihan
Courtesy of The Palm Beach Post

A recent headline in the Palm Beach Post asked, “Why does the Convention Center need Another Hotel?” As the article went on to explain, the answer is simple – the Convention Center DRI (Development of Regional Impact) allows for 1400 hotel rooms. Only 400, or so, have been built.

A better question – one that gathers West Palm Beach’s rush hour congestion and the lethal pedestrian gauntlet between Rosemary Square and the Convention Center into the same conversation – is why are the proposed hotels including parking garages? Let’s think about hotels more deeply. Hotels are places for visitors who fly here and leave their cars at home.

The very best hotels solve all of your transportation needs for you because, 1) it is a luxury to be driven, and 2) a customer without a car is far more likely to spend their money locally. Thus, hotels with limited on-site parking nudge the visitor and proprietor toward a better business model and customer experience.

Let’s understand parking garages more deeply. They cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 dollars per parking spot. Thus, a 500-car garage will add 25-million dollars to the cost of a large hotel project while creating little to no revenue stream in return.

In addition to their poor economic performance, parking garages make convenient a cars-only transportation model that diminishes the visitor’s luxury experience; further clogs Okeechobee Boulevard; and brings places within a 30-minute drive into competition with what West Palm Beach has to offer.

The traffic on Okeechobee is so bad that spending millions of dollars on smarter traffic signals to improve efficiency by 3 – 5% is being discussed seriously. The pedestrian crisis between Rosemary Square and the Convention Center is so real that a massive pedestrian bridge is floated as a good idea every so often.

Fewer cars on Okeechobee Boulevard is the answer to both of these problems.

A good first step toward that answer is building luxury “urban hotels” like one finds in cities around the world.

Let’s start building West Palm Beach for people, not cars.