Bye bye San Marco Avenue -- Hotels, housing will pour traffic onto entrance corridor. (George Gardner's St. Augustine Report)

KANTI PATEL and other wealthy campaign contributors are ruling and ruining our town these days.

In 2008, County Commission candidate RANDY BRUNSON belatedly produced a possibly belated "lease" providing for $100 month payment for his campaign HQ, to be paid after the campaign.  The Florida Ethics Commission dismissed the complaint I filed, based on public records showing no contemporaneous rent payments.  Charges were dismissed based on self-serving arguments at a probable cause hearing by RANDY BRUNSON's Tallahassee defense lawyer, former Ethics Commission Chair MARK HERRON(maladroit Bush v. Gore litigator).  Those included the statement that the building would soon be demolished (it's still there).  

Here's more evidence of KANTI PATEL's undue influence with city burghers from former St. Augustine Mayor George Gardner's St. Augustine Report:

Bye bye San Marco Avenue 

 Hotels, housing will pour traffic onto entrance corridor

   Five new hotels are in various stages of planning or development in St. Augustine. 

   Kanti Patel is completing a San Marco Renaissance Hotel on West Castillo Drive and preparing for a Hilton Garden Inn and a Springhill Suites by Marriott on the former Radio Shack and Bozard Ford lots on Ponce de Leon Blvd. at West San Carlos Street.

   Hagos Fissehaye is developing a Comfort Suites further north on Ponce de Leon Blvd. at Fairbanks Avenue and Hidden Harbor, Inc., a Homewood Suites by Hilton on Prawn Street off King Street

   The three Ponce de Leon Blvd. hotels can be expected to send traffic along San Marco Avenue.      Leaving the hotel for downtown, choices will be to turn toward Ponce de Leon Blvd. and cross two lanes of northbound traffic to get in a southbound lane, or to turn toward two-lane San Marco into town.

   Add to expected hotel traffic the length of San Marco those 921 new housing units jammed along US 1 at the north end of the city and it's bye bye San Marco - at least until the gridlock forces some switchbacks to US 1.

   Among possible solutions, require hotel guests to exit onto US 1, or increase parking costs downtown to $15-$20, or follow the example of Southern Oaks Inn at US 1 and SR 16, which offers a complimentary shuttle to its guests to and from downtown St. Augustine.