Here we go again: Vero Beach eyes parking, fewer lanes on State Road 60 downtown | Opinion
John Carroll sits in his office high above the Twin Pairs with a vision for a top-notch downtown Vero Beach.
As one of three new Vero Beach council members, he envisions tapering the seven lanes of eastbound and westbound State Road 60 to two lanes of traffic each way between the railroad tracks and St. Helen Church.
Traffic would flow well, he said, even if some landscape buffering were added, along with expanded bicycle lanes and room for street parking.
“That has been the preferred choice of many municipalities,” said Carroll, an engineer who enjoys traveling and enjoying vibrant downtowns. “What is the goal for (our) downtown? That is the No. 1 question.”
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30-year-plus Vero Beach debate
I don't think Carroll is necessarily asking the right question. But without seeing exactly how Carroll’s idea would work, I’d hate to shoot it down.
I don’t see — and have never seen — a problem with the so-called Twin Pairs, one-way streets that run through Vero Beach from 20th Avenue to Indian River Boulevard.
Others have — since even before they were changed from two-way to one-way streets in 1992. Carroll, for example, says he sees lots of speeders.
The facts over the past 30 years are that downtown, which had been a ghost town, has been reborn with offices, places to eat, art galleries and more despite the Twin Pairs. Studies in 2021 showed the road is not only safe, but speeding is not a major problem.
Such studies should guide city planning as opposed to anecdotes about wrecks and dragsters Twin Pairs naysayers like to tell.
The fact is, wrecks happen everywhere. People speed on every street. That doesn’t mean we need to cut Interstate 95 to two lanes or the speed limit to 50. Much of the interstate through Florida has been widened because of safety concerns and traffic growth.
And therein lies the dilemma with State Road 60. It is the main east-west road from the Vero Beach to Clearwater and one of two that connect Interstate 95 in Indian River County to the beach. But it also bisects Vero Beach’s traditional downtown.
It's a conflict. Is moving traffic safely and efficiently more or less important than potentially making downtown even better? Is there a way to handle both goals?
The fact is, as Indian River County grows from an estimated 165,559 people now to 181,640 by 2030; 196,133 by 2040; and 206,847 by 2050, we likely will need more lanes of traffic rather than fewer.
Planning ahead for growth — not only the stability of downtown — is why local leaders representing only 36,000 people in 1970 fought the battle to widen State Road 60 west of downtown to six lanes.
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Rather plan like Port St. Lucie?
Without such planning, we might be more like Port St. Lucie, which didn't plan ahead. Instead, it had to buy homes along main roads and condemn them to widen — at huge taxpayer cost — their east-west thoroughfares.
The Twin Pairs is one of three complicated issues Carroll asked to be discussed at a council meeting slated for 5 p.m. Tuesday. The others: parking and the Three Corners project, which would redevelop city-owned property at Indian River Boulevard and 17th Street.
(State Road 60 repaving also is on the county's Metropolitan Planning Organization agenda. The MPO will meet at 10 a..m. Wednesday in County Administration Building B, 1800 27th St., Vero Beach.)
If Carroll's topics aren’t enough to provoke discussion to last past some council members’ bedtimes, Mayor John Cotugno also wants to talk about a “Downtown Planning Consultant Plan,” which, he said, at $60,000, is included in the city budget.
Cotugno told me he’d like to see the city engage in a process that gets everyone on the same page, much as it did with the Three Corners, when the city hired planner Andres Duany to see what the community wanted for the old power plant and sewer plant sites.
“Nobody can rightfully say we didn’t have input with the Three Corners,” he said.
In discussing issues downtown and in the oceanside business district, Cotugno accurately described a challenge for council.
“You’ll talk to six merchants and you’ll get six different opinions,” he said. “Nobody’s talking with each other.”
I, for example, never have a problem parking anywhere — and I have worked downtown for about seven years. I find it safe to cross the Twin Pairs — when it’s my turn — at traffic signals.
I don’t like crossing State Road 60 near the courthouse or American Icon brewery, where for years I have recommended brick-paver crosswalks.
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Focus on quality planning initiatives
I was supportive of the constructive conversation and compromise City Council had in 2021, when it got staff to ask the Florida Department of Transportation to add crosswalks, narrow driving lanes, widen bicycle lanes and lower the speed limit along the road when FDOT repaves the road at an estimated cost of $6.7 million in fiscal 2027.
I’m not convinced anything needs to be done. I am willing to compromise between doing nothing and radically changing the road so much that people, as they did decades ago, might prefer to travel east-west through residential neighborhoods such as McAnsh and Osceola parks.
Vero Beach City Council has a lot on its plate. And, sadly, it has not discussed an issue that threatens to turn Vero Beach more into Generic Town USA: zoning laws that encourage mattress stores, car washes, storage units and other cookie-cutter development.
As I noted a year ago, one of the prime sites in the city, just east of the police station on State Road 60, could have been the perfect site for a development combining mixed uses — restaurants, shops, offices and residences. It could have sparked improvements in the neighborhood to the south and east.
Instead, a massive storage facility is going up. Meantime, on the other side of that neighborhood, there are plans to demolish the old Press Journal building and build more routine commercial development (including another massive storage facility (!) and yet another car wash!).
Without planning initiatives that reward creative mixed uses along commercial corridors, the city is losing opportunities to improve neighborhoods and our quality of life one parcel at a time. It's been going on for several years along the water as the city has suffered from what I called "condo creep" — where restaurants, hotels and other commercial properties are demolished and turned into residences.
Can our city’s talented, yet overburdened, planning department get a little extra help to shepherd some positive change?
I’d rather see the city focus on big, bold visions, such as the Three Corners, and encouraging quality development, rather than restricting traffic and solving “problems” many people do not think exist.
If you don’t think the city should narrow the Twin Pairs, drop me a line at the email below (we might publish it as a letter to the editor), and make sure you go to Tuesday’s council meeting.
This column reflects the opinion of Laurence Reisman. Contact him via email at larry.reisman@tcpalm.com, phone at 772-978-2223, Facebook.com/larryreisman or Twitter @LaurenceReisman
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: SR 60: Add parking, cut lanes through downtown Vero Beach? | Opinion
