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I live in a quaint section of Jacksonville called San Marco. This area was originally developed in the 1920s and 30s, and is filled with charming “Florida Bungalows”. These bungalows were renowned in their time for having continuity of design without monotony. Additionally, many were also without garages. Garage-less houses were not uncommon in that era, as San Marco had an electric trolley car that served the area.

Some houses had a small parking pad around the back with two ribbons of concrete leading to the area. Others had carports and even a few one car garages – which could have been added later.

Fast forward to today and parking is a challenge, especially since most homes have two cars or more. You can see the cars parked tandem in the driveway in front of their one car garage. Some of those garages have been converted into living space, as the homes are quite small by today’s standards. Occasionally, cars can be seen extending into the sidewalk blocking the pedestrian path of travel.

Many cars end up parked along one side of the street, effectively making them one lane roads.

Lastly, some have opted to park not on the street, but in their yard.

You could argue that the car is historic, but does it add to or take away from that “historic charm”? I’ll let you decide.

Parking on the street is a roll of the dice. Last week, as a city garbage truck was making it rounds, one of its arms encountered a parked car, bending the front wheel and partially removed the front bumper.

It’s not as if new homes are immune from their own parking ailments. In my previous community, one house had a three-car garage and six cars parked in the driveway. The garage had been converted into living space. Hey – I get it. People should take precedence over cars. And people do outgrow their homes. But this is new construction – can’t we do better? This community also didn’t allow overnight street parking, I’m told the household frequently got citations from the HOA.

Other times, the garage simply isn’t big enough for all the cars in the family. We have three children and as they grew older, each had cars to drive to high school and/or college. Thankfully, they didn’t all have cars at the same time while living at home.

Here’s the truth: Sometimes, new construction doesn’t build their garages large enough for the basics: cars, trash cans, water heaters, and water softeners. This seems to be the case in our new alley loaded townhome. The water heater is mercifully out of the way because it is gas and mounted on the exterior wall to the side of the garage door for venting. And while our oversized garbage can fits in the garage we have to back out a car to take out the trash – which comes super early.

But then there’s the water softener. The loop for the water softener was the only thing in place when homeowners closed on their units. And since the water tank was not installed until after CO – there was no protective bollard installed. But Jacksonville water demands softening, and many homeowners found their garages become too small for two cars post-water softener installation. Either they are afraid they will hit it or once their cars are parked, the water softener will block their access to the inside of their unit. We moved our water softener loop out of the way to the spot adjacent to the water heater. Lots of extra piping that could have been avoided.

Alley loaded garages also come with unique challenges. In our case, we have only 10’ between our garage door and the actual alley paving. This allows adequate backing but no room for parking a car behind our garage door – or so we thought. Turns out, several of our neighbors have opted to park a car parallel to their garage door.

This means many are driving over the small bit of landscaping between the doors. Some are better at getting their cars parallel to the garage. Others, not so much, as they have part of their car extending over the 10’ apron and into the alley. This makes backing for the folks across the alley more difficult.

I know there are many who think we are too reliant on cars. But the reality is Jacksonville doesn’t have the mass transit infrastructure like a Chicago, DC, or NYC. Indeed, that is the reality for most mid-sized and small towns throughout the country. Under-sizing the garages will NOT alter that behavior and will only lead to more issues. Having adequately-sized garages keeps cars off the streets and blocking sidewalks.

My minimum depth for a garage is 20’ with a 2’ recess for the water heater, softener, and trashcans.

If you too have had some parking challenges, I would love to hear how you have overcome them. Just reply to this email. Thanks