St. Armands garage is straining Sarasota’s parking finances

When the city of Sarasota debuted its St. Armands garage in 2019, the four-story building was heralded as a state-of-the-art solution to solve years of parking woes on the island.

The $15.6 million project was projected to bring in $751,000 per year through hourly fees to help pay off the debt to build it. The garage was a boon for the St. Armands business community, which had pressed the city for more parking spaces near the circle to keep up with tourist demand.

As a trade-off, the city began charging for street-level parking throughout Sarasota, including downtown spots that were free at the time.

But in the seven years since, the garage has fallen short of the revenue projections envisioned by city officials, who have tapped their general fund to bail out the garage with $1.2 million in loans and transfers — creating a financial strain on the city’s entire parking division.

With the city now facing a crisis over its parking budget — and its latest proposal to increase paid hours causing a revolt by residents and business owners — the St. Armands garage has emerged as a key reason the department remains unable to support itself. 

The parking division, which is supposed to be financially self-sufficient, now owes the city more than $1.64 million after repeatedly borrowing from the general fund to cover shortfalls in parking fees and other revenue that officials attribute to the pandemic and 2024 hurricane season. 

About 91% of that debt is tied to the St. Armands Paid Parking Fund, which has a separate budget within the parking division. 

Merchants on the circle who rallied for the garage cover about a 23% share of its debt through special assessments. On some days, especially during the slow summer season, the 484-space garage they wanted is lined with empty rows. 

Across the bridge, downtown storefronts are now leading a similar push for more parking, packing city commission meetings in recent months to lobby for parking fees that are easier for customers to swallow. 

But because of the debt tied to the St. Armands garage, options to alleviate parking downtown now appear limited.

Former City Manager Marlon Brown, who oversaw much of the garage project, said that since it would not be able to pay for its own debt service without charging much higher rates, the city must play a budgetary “shell game.” 

“They may say that’s too much strain on the general fund or the parking fund,” Brown said. “At the end of the day, it will be eventually paid off, and that money could be paid back.”

The Parking Division will host an open house on Monday at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall to address the ongoing community debate on how to handle the parking shortfall. 

Commissioners attempted to address the problem in May by voting to lengthen the on-street paid parking hours, expanding them by six hours a day, from 8 a.m. to midnight on Monday through Saturday and on Sunday afternoons.

The new policy lasted just more than a month. Merchants marched into meeting after meeting, saying the new hours discouraged customers — and they were losing business to shopping districts outside city limits, like the University Town Center, which has free parking.

In March, the parking division presented other options to the commission, like raising fees for monthly permitted parking and increasing hourly rates, which vary by location. The division projected deficits of $1.58 million for its “General Parking Fund-Downtown” through 2031.

Parking budgets reviewed by Suncoast Searchlight indicate that the St. Armands garage is a big reason for that. 

Sarasota still owes at least $12.1 million for the project, with debt payments of about $1.1 million a year scheduled through 2038, records show.

City spokesperson Luke Mocherman could not answer emailed questions about the debt tied to the garage and denied requests to interview city staff members. But Sarasota Planning Director Steve Cover provided an email statement to Suncoast Searchlight.

“The decision to build a garage, including the caveat that a paid parking program would be required to cover bond payments, received broad community support,” Cover said. “Since the completion of the garage…, major events such as the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and significant hurricane impacts in 2024 caused parking revenue losses and required the city to find alternatives, including general fund transfers, to fund parking operations and the St. Armands garage bond.”

Chris Voelker sits on the city’s Downtown Improvement District board and owns State Street Eating House + Cocktails. She was among the top organizers downtown rebelling against the extended parking hours and vigorous enforcement.

Although the St. Armands garage accounts for many of Sarasota’s parking headaches, Voekler says it’s not to blame for their recent clash with the city. She sees the problem stemming from the parking division’s financial mismanagement.

“It is not a point of contention,” Voelker said of the garage. “Right now, people here are comfy after we got the hours back and the parking enforcement changed.”

Facing pressure from storefronts, a new garage was born

Scott Macdonald’s family has owned the Crab & Fin restaurant on St. Armands since 1978. Plants hang from the awning as fans cool patrons who lounge on the outside patio that overlooks the circle.

Macdonald was involved in the push by merchants for parking relief over a decade ago. At the time, the engineering firm Kimley-Horn found that St. Armands was about 320 parking spots shy of meeting demand.

“During the height of the season, it’s definitely been very beneficial, and especially for the amount of employees out there,” Macdonald said. “It was a good buy-in from everybody because parking was a major issue on the circle.”

Before the city commission green-lit the project, then-Parking Manager Mark Lyons said that, between the new tax on business owners like Macdonald and revenue collected by the garage, the city would be able to meet its debt obligations.

At a meeting that year, then-Commissioner Shelli Freeland Eddie asked if Lyons or any other city staffer knew how much money the garage would need to collect to break even. Lyons said “no.”

But a Kimley-Horn presentation to the city commission the year prior showed that if the parking garage brought $751,000 a year, it would still lose about $9 million over a decade.

Instead, the garage has brought in an average of about $212,000 per year between 2019 and 2025, according to budget documents and estimates. Even at the garage’s financial peak in 2023 and 2024, its revenue reached just under half of that annual projection.

Combined with the assessment on St. Armands businesses, that leaves the city short by about $628,000 on average each year for its debt.

Macdonald said although the garage has been a success, the city’s recent attempt to extend paid street-level parking to help pay for it has hurt his business.

“The way the parking division is being run is kind of the bone of our contention right now because they’re losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, providing less and less service,” he said. “Now our patrons and our employees were having to pay for parking where they weren’t before.”

Hurricanes and COVID force parking bailouts

Liz Alpert is the only holdover left on the city commission from its 2016 vote to approve the parking garage. 

Looking back, she said although the garage hasn’t met revenue expectations, she still would have voted for it because of the need for parking at St. Armands at the time. 

Alpert pointed to a series of setbacks — including COVID-19 and the trio of devastating hurricanes in 2024 — that hampered tourism and decimated the garage’s revenue stream.

All the while, the city still had to make its debt payments.

“Nobody would have expected COVID, nobody even thought about that,” Alpert told Suncoast Searchlight. “And we hadn’t been hit with a hurricane in 50 years.”

There does not appear to have been a planned contingency if the garage couldn’t pay its own bills due to a natural disaster.

In September 2025, the city commission approved a $400,000 loan to cover the parking division’s hurricane-related revenue deficit. In total, the city has loaned or given the parking division more than $1 million since 2018 to pay down debt.

Casey Gonzmart Jr. is a fifth-generation member of the family that owns and operates the historic Columbia Restaurant group. The St. Armands location is a stalwart of the city’s dining scene. 

Gonzmart Jr. said the garage has been instrumental in allowing St. Armands businesses to continue to grow along with the increased interest and traffic the area has seen over the past couple of decades. The new garage meant more spaces for both visitors and employees.

“It’s been a great return on our investment,” he said. “Everyone doesn’t mind paying for it because we all see the net benefit.”

Christian Casale is a local government/politics reporter for Suncoast Searchlight. Email him at christian@suncoastsearchlight.org.