39 parking spaces to be added to riverfront area

The city of Fernandina Beach plans on more riverfront improvements, including adding 39 more parking spaces along Front Street and adjoining areas.

Jacob Platt, city project coordinator, detailed improvement plans underway at the Waterfront Advisory Board (WAB) meeting Wednesday.

The work includes:

Significant work along the river shoreline at the city property at 101 N. Front St. will be the removal of concrete debris piled up on the sand.

"We certainly want to look at cleaning up the shoreline," Platt said. We have some open cell large pavers that you'll see in the southern end of parking lot C and D that they use to stabilize the shoreline and then they planted them with different marsh grasses, and it's really done great you can hardly see the blocks through the grass now and we've got some of those left over at the city yard. We're working through what kind of permit we need through DEP, but looking to kind of stabilize that and clean that up because it is difficult. There's some rebar and other things down there that we need to clean up."

Platt detailed other locations within the CRA for more parking to be added.

"These improvements would be from Alachua Street at Standard Marine, all the way to Broome Street, so currently you have perpendicular parking on the west side and kind of unimproved free-for -all parking on the east side. You've got the Broome Street parking lot here and there's two driveways that are located here, that we're able to eliminate this driveway and maintain this ADA spot and add four spaces in the existing parking lot which I think is a good thing for events that will take place," Platt said. "We'll add four spaces on either side of that section of North 2nd street, so this is a planned view it shows to accommodate this and we're going to one-way the street which is what you have in the streetscape from Centre to Alachua. We would extend that to Broome Street that allows you to match the streetscape with the wide sidewalks eight-and-a-half feet all the way up to Broome Street, so you would continue that streetscape along 2nd street all the way to Broome."

Watch the video:

The work is scheduled for late summer during the North Second Street project mobilization, with asphalt and concrete contractors handling both projects simultaneously.

Platt said the projects will be reviewed by the city Technical Review Committee and Historic District Council review June, followed by city commission fund approval in July.

2nd Street Improvements

101 Front Street plan