Maitland wants SunRail parking garage

The City of Maitland is adding a $3.4 million parking garage to its Capital Improvement Plan, even though the station has one of the lowest ridership numbers along the entire line, averaging less than 200 passengers per day.

City CRA Manager Charles Rudd says the plan is less about the riders of today and more about the riders in the future.

“Now, it is what it is, but it's good practice just to be planning, so that as it goes up we have a plan in place to address this," Rudd said.

The project is now on the books for fiscal year 2019.

Rudd says now they are concentrating on attracting more people to the SunRail station.

“We want to attract people to the SunRail station and to downtown," he said. "We have also put similar markers in our future plans for our downtown parking structure. We want to attract people to our downtown, so we need to provide some public parking.”

Rudd says there is nothing fancy or different about this $3.4 million parking garage and the city could reconsider if needed.

 “At that time, I am sure we will evaluate if we need to push that a little further down the road, or go ahead and address it, but we want to plan for it at least.”

While Maitland is planning the garage, they are not planning on paying for it. The city says they will try and get federal or state grant money to build that parking garage.