New Restaurant in Old Marco Lacks Parking

There is a new 268 seat restaurant being planned right next to the Snook Inn on Marco Island. The problem is there will be only 42 drive up spots and 25 valet spots, many of those already in use by patrons of the Snook Inn desperate to park anywhere. On any given evening, especially the weekend, Old Marco has cars parked in every swale, public parking spot and trespassing in residential and condo lots causing the Marco police to constantly be there writing tickets and dealing with congestion on narrow two-lane roads that dead ends past the restaurants and bars causing confused patrons to turn around anywhere they can.

The Snook Inn serves thousands of meals on a busy night and the new restaurant has more capacity than the Snook. The Snook Inn has an employee parking lot for 60 cars and has 120 employees. The new restaurant does not have any employee parking! For any more restaurants such as this new proposal there needs to be a city driven parking and traffic flow project that would need completed before opening. There was money in the budget for such a project but was removed or not used. Big mistake! There is already gridlock in the area many evenings which also affects ambulance and fire service.

Old Marco was a quaint area of Marco Island that has become a parking nightmare. This needs to be addressed by the City Council before more development totally ruins Old Marco.

Thank you

Kent Kadel

40-year Owner in Old Marco