PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. — Last week at our Let's Hear It event in Palm Beach Gardens, we asked you to bring us your traffic concerns, and we heard you.
Helen Brown joined us there. She sat down with WPTV's Michael Hoffman to talk about a plan to build an ice skating complex at Plant Drive Park, in Palm Beach Gardens.
And just last night, the city’s Planning and Zoning Board gave that project the green light to move forward.
People living around Plant Drive Park are concerned with that project mainly because of the traffic it would bring to an already heavily trafficked area.
Around 3 p.m. every day, when schools let out, the road in front of Plant Drive Park becomes a parking lot.
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“If I try to leave my house in between two o'clock and 3:30, it's a nightmare,” said Brown.
Brown lives across the street from where the rinks are proposed and she says with the street already packed to the brim…
“When there's nowhere to go, there's nowhere to go,” said Brown. “You know, you can only stuff so much in a stocking.”
That’s why she and others, like Heather Deichman, are concerned what will happen if and when the ice rink is up and running.
“There is already a lot of traffic on that road,” said Deichman. “We see a lot of speeding on the street. There's a lot of people cutting and not stopping at stop signs. Adding an extra 1,700 or so trips a day seems like a lot for a two-lane road."
According to documents presented to Planning and Zoning Tuesday night, the ice park will also have a planned 311 parking spaces added to the property.
But still, the project as a whole is an idea that Helen and Heather aren’t warming up to. At the end of the day, they both say one of their biggest problems with the project is taking away the free and accessible parking.
“I’m a hockey fan,” said Deichman. “I have no problem with an ice rink. I have a problem with an ice rink in a neighborhood park that's free and accessible, and taking that free and accessible space away and putting in something that costs money, that's what I have a problem with."
The next phase in this project will go before the city council meeting on the first Thursday in January, when they will vote on whether or not this project goes forward.
