Beach out of reach

John Minard, 80, likes to walk or swim at the beach every day.

But lately the retired apple grower is having a hard time finding ways to access the beach near his home in North Naples.

With more visitors and more permanent residents coming to the region’s premier attraction, the parking lots are getting too full, he said.

“The last two years, it’s been horrible,” he said. “Lots get full by 8 a.m. in season, but even in August, they’re filling up by 10:30 a.m.”

Moreover, some of the parking spots he used to use near Clam Pass and Delnor Wiggins State Park when he first came to the area in 1985 are long gone, making some of his beach access points inaccessible — and creating choke points at others.

“Access points at the beach are mobbed while the spaces between them are wide open,” he said. “It never was like this before.”

As more people come to Southwest Florida looking for their spot on the sand — and taking up already limited parking at rising fees — debate is growing as to whether they’re being funneled into too few beach access points. And that could negatively affect tourism and real estate sales.

“People come here for the beautiful beaches,” said Mark Strain, chairman of the Collier County Planning Commission and its chief hearing examiner. “But it’s getting harder and harder for people who don’t actually live along the beach to access them.”

On the surface it may not seem that Southwest Florida has much of a beach access problem, at least compared with some other parts of Florida, which has more than 2,000 public access points statewide.

According to Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection, Collier County has 57 public access points along its 34 miles of sandy beaches (spaced at an average of every 0.6 miles), while Lee County has 98 access points along 47 miles of coastline (or every 0.48 miles), and Charlotte County has nine access points along 12 miles of beach (or every 1.33 miles).

Contrast that to Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa, that has only one access point along its paltry 2 miles of beach — and it can be reached only by boat.

But compared with South Florida counties on the east coast, Southwest Florida’s access points seem limited and far apart.

Miami-Dade County has 129 public access points over 20.8 miles, or an access point every 0.16 miles. And Broward County, which includes Fort Lauderdale, has 179 access points over 24 miles, or every 0.13 miles.

Having more access points, as well as ample public parking nearby, makes it much easier for Florida’s east coast beachgoers to hit the sand, said Miami resident Carmen Borges, 51.

Lounging on Vanderbilt Beach last week, Borges said Naples’ more restricted access and longer walks to crowded parking lots was frustrating by comparison.

“If you come with stroller or a kid, or someone who is handicapped, it’s difficult,” she said.

Nearby, Wendy Batts, 43, of Louisville, Kentucky, wondered aloud why associations for beachfront condos — many of which are owned by seasonal residents and empty for much of the year — don’t allow tourists to use their empty parking lots and access their private beaches during the off-season.

“It would be gracious,” she said. “After all, we spend money here and help keep your economy afloat.”

Collier planner Strain is worried the county isn’t preparing adequately for what he sees as an explosion of demand that will only get worse.

Collier’s permanent population is 354,000, and its peak seasonal population is 425,000. Strain estimates the county’s population will swell to 1 million to 1.2 million when it’s built out.

The county has 1,516 beach access parking spaces, not counting the city of Naples.

No boardwalks or new access points to the beach are being planned, Strain said, and rocketing beachfront prices make buying more land for access or parking too prohibitive for county coffers.

Click here to view a map of beach access points in Collier »

Another problem is resistance by people who live on or near the beach to providing more ways for tourists and inland residents to reach what many consider their own private preserves, he said.

“People pay a lot of money to live along the beach,” he said. “And once they’re there, they want it to stay the way it is.”

So residents often resist suggestions like bigger parking garages or public transit, even if it would mean cutting down on the number of cars that prowl streets looking for spots, Strain said.

For instance, when the luxury high-rise Moraya Bay was built seven years ago, it cut off 16 county public parking spaces at the entrance to the neighboring North Naples beach access.

So sand-seekers who wanted to use their free-to-residents Collier County parking stickers were forced to use Conner Park, a half-mile away.

Shuttles from inland parking lots would help alleviate the problem, but too often, residents object to them, Strain said.

But sticking your head in the sand won’t make the problem go away, he added.

“As the eastern portions of the county become developed and residents head to the beach, especially from huge new towns like Rural Lands West and Ave Maria, traffic along the beach will be terrible,” he predicted.

What’s more, because many of the county’s beach access points have no public parking nearby, they are for all practical purposes inaccessible for anyone who doesn’t live within walking or biking distance, Strain said.

Such inaccessible access points include the roughly 2-mile stretch on North Gulfshore Drive from Vanderbilt Road to 110th Street, or the beach along Pelican Bay.

And sometimes even bike riders have a hard time finding a spot.

When he lived on Marco Island, Gage Wheeler, 20, often found the five to eight spaces provided for bikes on beach access racks “really packed.”

“Sometimes there was no place to lock up your bike,” he said.

Other times, especially during the stormy summer months, parking lots flood to the point of being nearly impassable for days, as frequently happens at the 96-space Collier County lot on Lely Barefoot Boulevard that serves the access point to both Barefoot Beach and Bonita Beach, just over the Lee County line.

Carl Schwing, manager of the city of Bonita Springs, said he’s “very concerned” about the lack of parking at Bonita Beach, the most accessible public beach in the southern part of Lee County in terms of parking.

Although there are 99 parking spaces on the Lee County side of the beach access, he’s hoping the lot can be reconfigured to squeeze in a few more spaces.

Vote in our online poll: Do you think there are enough beach access points in Collier and Lee? 

He’s also asking two developers who want to build inland hotels in the city to add about 200 public parking spaces to their hotel lots. They’d then take residents and hotel guests to the beach on their private shuttle buses, which, unlike public shuttles, wouldn’t be subject to the whims of NIMBY neighbors.

“The idea has been well-received by the hoteliers,” he said, adding that private beach shuttles from master-planned communities like Bonita Bay are used frequently by residents and seasonal renters.

The growing demand for beach access has caused some residents, like Minard, to wonder if the price differential for different beach parking stickers is putting undue pressure on certain beaches.

Both residents and nonresidents of Lee County must pay $60 a year for a beach access parking sticker. But Collier's beach stickers cost only $50 for nonresidents (residents get a free sticker).

Minard thinks that's an incentive for Lee residents to buy Collier parking stickers instead of Lee stickers, contributing to the overcrowding of Collier beaches near the Lee line.

“Beaches primarily should be used by their own residents,” he said.

But that sort of logic has long been a bone of contention between officials of Collier County and the city of Naples, which occasionally floats the idea of limiting free parking along the beach just to city residents.

Naples City Manager Bill Moss said that’s inspired by the feeling that the county doesn’t do enough to help the city maintain its own access points, which actually outnumber those of the county and often attract county residents.

“About a million people a year come to the Naples Pier alone,” he said. The beach access to the popular Pier was refurbished last fall with new restrooms and planking that cost $2.5 million.

But while the Pier, Lowdermilk Park and the beach access at the end of Fifth Avenue South are heavily used, “there’s no planning whatsoever for more access,” Moss said. “To be able to acquire the land is beyond local government.”

That’s because many of the city’s beach access points are near some of the region’s most expensive real estate, with beachfront lots running into the millions.

Because public parking is limited to a handful of spaces at these access points, beaches near the mansions are among the most uncrowded in the region — although people sometimes park illegally to get to them.

“People park on yards and shrubs, so we have to send the police around,” Moss said.

Yet there are no plans to shuttle people to these more secluded beach access points, Moss said.

“We’re not looking for ways to help people get to the beaches here,” he said.

In fact, the city recently upped its parking rate for paid spots from $1.50 to $2.50 an hour and put in meters that take credit cards in a move that’s anticipated to bring $1 million in revenue to the city, said Lisa Douglass, the city’s billing and collection manager.

When people pay meters with coins, she explained, they stay only as long as the jingle in their pockets will allow.

“But people are more apt to overpay with credit cards so they don’t have to come back and feed the meters,” she said, adding the city has 1,305 beach-access parking spots.

While rising fees bring in revenue, they also hamper accessibility for those hard-pressed to afford them.

Fort Myers Beach resident Jimmy Masterson, 52, said it also puts a damper on the day of beachgoers who must constantly check to make sure their meters aren’t expired, exposing them to heavy fines.

“When I came here 19 years ago, parking along the beach was free,” he said.

In Lee County, parking fees rose in 2009 from $1 to $2 an hour at the Bonita Beach Access No. 1, Lynn Hall and Bonita Beach Park access points. They rose the same amount in 2013 at Bonita Beach Access No.10, Bowditch and Bunche Beach.

That helped to raise parking revenues at beach parks from $1.34 million in 2013 to $1.54 million in 2015.

In the meantime, businesses near the beach wrestle with the issue of beachgoers parking in their lots to avoid the paid spots. Is towing vehicles worth the risk of riling potential customers?

“It’s hard, since more people are taking up spots and staying longer,” said Adrian Graham, bar manager at the Beach Bar Café across from Vanderbilt Beach, adding she’s even had to shoo interlopers from employee parking spaces around the back of the building.

But she doesn’t understand why government officials, developers and beachfront residents can’t work together for a regional solution to a problem that won’t get better by itself.

“If big cities can figure it out, why can’t we?” she said.

A line in the sand

While limited access points, tight parking and rising fees are the biggest obstacles to public beach access, some beachgoers also say they are being chased away by waterfront property owners who say their beaches are private.

“It’s happening more and more,” said Grant Gillman, 18, who works at a Fort Myers Beach coffeehouse.

In reality, throughout Florida, all land owners along the sand only own rights to the beach up to the Erosion Control Point, or traditional mean high water line — a line that once set, doesn’t vary even if the beach is altered by erosion or beach renourishment.

The public has the right to use the beach from that line to the water.