December 19, 2020:
BARKLEY PLACE UPDATE: URGENT!! --Arthur Andelson, 12/19/19
I attended the County Commissioners’ Hearing on Barkley Place which took place at 301 N. Olive, West Palm Beach today, December 19, 2019. I was the lone speaker from Cascade Lakes Residents Association, Inc. and I saw two speakers from Tuscany Bay and four from Colonial Estate Mobile Home Park. Tuscany Bay and I opposed the application. The President of Colonial Estate Mobile Home Park was on the fence because of the size of the restaurants. My concern was the traffic overflow onto Military Trail. Tuscany Bay was also concerned about the traffic and the smell from the restaurant dumpsters.
When it was my turn to speak, I introduced myself as a member of our community and I stated the following; I am also including the traffic management representative’s response after one of the Commissioners asked her to clarify the overflow issue based on my comments:
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When reviewing the Barkley Place package, figure numbers 4 and 5, the entrance leading into both north and south proposed projects, is going to be very dangerous because the parking congestion will feed out onto the fast-moving southbound Military Trail traffic. There are six reasons why the congestion will feed onto Military Trail. They are:
1. It looks like the entrance will only hold less than two cars before spilling out onto Military Trail without taking into consideration delivery trucks. The traffic management representative for the County stated that there is only 25 feet from Military Trail to the point of turning right or left into the parking lots, so the entrance is only 25 feet. This is actually only about a car and a half. She claimed that would not be a factor. This, in my opinion, is false. What happens when four people have a doctor’s appointment at the same time and then you have restaurant patrons all coming at the same time for lunch.
2. At the end of the short entrance, drivers will have to stop and decide to make a right or left turn into the north or south parking lots.
3. Additional bottleneck of parking will be created as drivers are leaving, making left and/or right turns into the same areas as the entering drivers are making right and/or left turns from th parking lots.
4. Additional congestion is created by drivers looking for parking as close to the buildings as possible which is at those immediate left and right turns. Knowing human nature, drivers will wait for slots to open up, creating more congestion.
5. There are not enough parking spots proposed when taking into consideration all the slots needed for the cars for employees, patients, consumers, vendors, and deliveries.
6. This overflow will impede the right of way of both pedestrians and bicyclists.
Because of this imminent hazard, there needs to be a right turn lane feeding the overflow of traffic going into both entrances from Military Trail. In order to do that, the best way to solve this is for the developer to make a fair and reasonable offer to purchase land from Colonial Estate Mobile Home Park the width of which should be to the first parallel street in their community, push everything back, and this would allow for the creation of a right turn lane. Furthermore, having additional distance to the first street in that community would add an additional barrier to those remaining homes which would be on the far side of that street. This would require the removal of 17 homes; if the amount offered by the developer was enough, it might incentivize that community to accept such an offer. Also, with the additional land purchased, it will create additional room for additional parking spaces, and it will create a longer entrance allowing for more than 1 and a half cars to ingress and egress at the same time.
Barring that proposed resolution, this proposal should be rejected because it is many, many accidents waiting to happen.
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If you are truly concerned, I urge you to copy and paste this post starting from “When reviewing the Barkley Place package” through the last sentence above ending with the words “waiting to happen” (the text between my two line breaks) to an email and send your email to the Commissioners who may be persuaded to change their minds. If they don’t change their minds, I recommend that everyone move out of that right lane long before you approach that location. If you are planning on visiting that location, make sure you are not the car waiting in the street to be rear-ended.
To email all Commissioners at once, use the following email exactly as written:
BCC-AllCommissioners@pbcgov.org
Copy and paste the following into the subject line:
Appn. No. ZV/DOA-2018-01208, Delray Commons (Barkley Place)
As always, wishing the best to all my neighbors,
Arthur Andelson