'It's just been difficult': Palm Beach Day Academy hopes to ease parking crunch with new lot

Palm Beach Day Academy is moving forward with plans to alleviate a longstanding parking crunch at its Seaview Avenue campus.

At its monthly meeting on June 22, the Landmarks Preservation Commission unanimously approved a proposal from the 102-year-old co-ed private school to build a new surface parking lot, parking gates, fence and lighting on its upper school campus, which serves approximately 250 students in grades four through nine. Its lower campus at 1901 S. Flagler Drive in West Palm Beach serves about 300 students age 2 through third grade.

The project will add 31 parking spaces by converting the school's little-used west lawn into a parking facility for staff.

Currently, just 10 spaces are available for the school's 60 full-time staff members, Head of School Fanning Hearon III told the Daily News.

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Staffers who are unable to park their cars on campus must find open spots along bustling Seaview Avenue, and that can be a difficult task, Hearon added.

"There's a mix of spaces on Seaview Avenue," he said. "Some are two-hour spaces and some are all day. But they get filled up really quick. You've got Palm Beach Public, you've got the (Mandel) Rec Center, you've got Palm Beach Day and you've got local businesses on Seaview Avenue. Those parking spots get filled up very quickly. It's very hard for our faculty and staff to find parking."

School staffers have had to get creative in order find parking near the school, Hearon said.

Some set alarms on their phones every two hours so they can move their cars to a different spot along Seaview Avenue, while others coordinate with their colleagues to switch spots.

"You're literally taking two cars on Seaview Avenue and flipping them," Hearon said. "It's not like we're opening the spaces up for anybody. People don't realize that it's that bad."

The school's parking problem has pre-dated Hearon's tenure at the school, which began three years ago.

Hearon noted that while the town's recent population growth helped spur record enrollment last year at Palm Beach Day, leading to more faculty being hired, the school's parking issues were not directly related to that growth.

"This has always been an issue for us on the Seaview Avenue campus," he said.

A new parking lot will help ease the parking problem, Hearon said, though it won't eliminate it.

Even with the additional parking, approximately half of the school's full-time staff will be unable to park on campus.

"It's still not going to accommodate everybody," Hearon said. "It's just been difficult. We view it as a town issue, a school issue and a Rec Center issue. We're all just trying to figure it out. We think that by providing a parking lot on the west field, we'll be able to accommodate our faculty and staff. It'll be a safer and much more manageable situation for everyone, especially for businesses and our neighbors on Seaview Avenue."

Commission members were supportive of the project, as was the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach, which works to preserve the town's architectural and cultural heritage. Palm Beach Day Academy was designated as a town landmark in 1991.

"The parking lot doesn't negatively affect the architecture of this historically landmarked structure," Preservation Foundation Director of Education Aimee Sunny told commission members.

Plans for the project will be presented to the Town Council next week for consideration and approval.

If the council approves the plans, the school will move forward with putting the project out to bid, Hearon said.

Palm Beach Day will pay for the project, though cost estimates were not immediately available.

Hearon said the school hopes to move quickly with the project, and he expects construction to be completed during the upcoming school year.

School officials anticipate minimal impact to traffic on Seaview Avenue or to school functions once construction gets underway.

"We feel that this is a project that benefits a lot of people," Hearon said. "It benefits the local businesses on South County Road and Seaview Avenue, it benefits the Rec Center, it benefits us, and it benefits anyone who's looking for parking on Seaview, which I think is one of the busiest streets in town. People just don't realize that."

Jodie Wagner is a journalist at the Palm Beach Daily News, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach her at jwagner@pbdailynews.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Palm Beach Day Academy hopes to ease parking crunch with new lot