Rehoboth Beach has a city code, online for all to read, at ecode360.com/RE0659. Section 270, Zoning, is at ecode360.com/7276697. It also has a 2010 Comprehensive Development Plan at cityofrehoboth.civicweb.net/filepro/documents/12267?preview=12268).
The zoning section of the code speaks to specific requirements, including parking. The 2010 CDP clearly states “no more cars” - three times: “Access for people should not be inhibited; rather access by people must be increased while traffic is decreased. In other words, Rehoboth will accept more people, it will not accept more cars.”
CST asserts “only” 30 sold-out shows per year, out of about 100 evening programs and 40-plus matinees. “Only” 30 sold-out shows out of the 54 summer evening performances and 10 summer matinees. And CST acknowledges that 70 percent of their ticket holders are arriving at their Baltimore Avenue location in cars; they don’t count the cars of those involved in putting on a production.
CST seeks to build a theater with 250 seats, and likely involving perhaps 50 or more performers, crew, staff and volunteers, at the busiest and narrowest portion of Rehoboth Avenue, through which the vast majority of our visitors (and residents) must pass, and within 200 feet of the traffic circle at which Grove Street, Rehoboth Avenue and Columbia Avenue - the latter serving not only the north side of the city but also Henlopen Acres, North Shores and Cape Henlopen State Park - all come together.
Further, CST conducts a summer camp program, in the four or five busiest weeks of July and August, for hundreds of young people, who are dropped off at 8:45 a.m. and picked up at 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. That may work fine on wide, dead-end Baltimore Avenue, but doesn’t bode well in normal summer traffic on Rehoboth Avenue, near the traffic circle. Visitors stream in to get their spaces on the street and on the beach; visitors stream out in the late afternoon. We’ve all experienced it. And these functions bring in the largest numbers - residents from the local area - during the busiest weeks, days and day parts of the city’s year. 30 times! Those parking spaces they occupy don’t turn over for many hours.
The CDP says “Access for people should not be inhibited; rather access by people must be increased while traffic is decreased. In other words, Rehoboth will accept more people, it will not accept more cars.” It makes that statement three times. Should it have been stated a fourth? Has the city added any acreage since it was approved in 2010?
While code doesn’t necessarily require parking for new buildings of fewer than 15,000 zoning square feet, it boggles the mind to think that those 300 people won’t bring more cars into our city. And there is good reason to believe that the CST building alone, as presented, represents more than 15,000 square feet, before adding into the mixture the 9,950-square-foot second building.
These 125 spaces, at 20 feet each, require 2,500 linear feet of curb, uninterrupted by cross-streets, driveways, crosswalks, fire hydrants - and other cars already parked. That simply doesn’t exist anywhere near the 400 block of Rehoboth Avenue. 125 spaces, at 350 square feet each (including aisles) is a parking lot of about an acre - nearly three times the CST and RSI lots combined. I doubt that one in 100 Rehoboth Beach residents would assent to replacing Grove Park’s shade and amenities with a parking lot. CST’s patrons’ cars come in. That’s one trip. They may drop off their passengers and go park. That’s a second trip. Given the givens - little parking existing in that narrowed part of town, with short blocks - that will require some cruising, trying first the metered streets and then into the neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods are not the cornfield surrounding the Field of Dreams, into which they can simply vanish without effects. Too many cars for too little space. After the performance, there is the return to the car, on residential streets without sidewalks. Then perhaps back to the 400 block of Rehoboth Avenue to retrieve the passengers. Then back around the circle and across the bridge. It is two trips, maybe four, for each of those cars. And the parking spaces they seek are already in use, in any normal year. Making huge exceptions to our code doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t make the problem of all those cars go away; it merely shifts it onto the residents and visitors. CST seems to think that the rules shouldn’t apply.
No matter how special one might believe CST to be, the next applicants for big projects will argue that code doesn’t apply to them, either, and that the CDP need not be taken seriously.
Approving this project at this scale in this place does not serve our city’s future. It will be there long after we’re gone. Our code exists to protect what makes Rehoboth a nice place to visit, and to live in. Our CDP is firm.
Other than hotels, the Rehoboth Elementary School and City Hall, this is the largest project requested within city limits. But each of those have sufficient off-street parking to accommodate the cars they attract.
As in Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will come. Does our 2010 CDP mean nothing? Will the next CDP propose a total solution to the congestion and parking issues that 300 people in cars would create at that pivotal location?
The folks who are most enthusiastic about Clear Space live outside of city limits, are not benefited - or protected - by the city’s code, and couldn’t care less about code. They come into town for their pleasure. And they chose to live in places with more relaxed codes. Asking the planning commission to ignore our code to enable CST to make things harder for Rehoboth residents, second-home owners and renters is, to put it gently, thoughtless.
I was one of the appellants to the August decision, and it wasn’t primarily the procedural issues that led me to sign on. It is the sort of substantive matters I describe here, which were also part of our appeal. Please take the time to read the correspondence in the files for this matter. You might come to understand our concerns, and our opposition to this huge project in this part of a very small city.
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