During the Dec. 11 Mountain Brook City Council Meeting, Emily Jensen, executive director of the Mountain Brook Chamber of Commerce, said there have been people operating commercial businesses out of vehicles in public parking spots
That is no longer allowed as the council passed an ordinance that prohibits that practice.
“When the vehicle pulls in, what they will say is, 'We're going to just go into the retail establishment and sell from the retail establishment,'” Jensen said. “What actually happens is they sell from the vehicle.”
The executive director of the chamber cited an instance in which someone was parked in one spot but actually took three spots.
“Certainly, that's detrimental to our brick-and-mortar businesses,” she said. They have people (parked) on either side in addition to the spot that was occupied by their vehicle.”
Jensen said it is her understanding that there were some issues with people doing business in the villages from their vehicles prior to her coming on board at the chamber.
“Over the past year, it's happened a couple of times,” she said. “It does tend to be ... these pop-up situations, but they aren't actually operating out of the stores.”
City Attorney Whitt Colvin said the city can revisit specific events where streets are closed to traffic.
“What we're saying is, this is a citywide event or it's something that the council approves,” Colvin said. “We sort of suspend all these parking rules because the other ones don't apply then either. Obviously, two-hour parking, four-hour parking, if you've got a tent there, it's a different spirit, right? Instead of doing a carve out here, I thought it might be smarter to look at all those parking regulations and make sure that if we're going to make an exception for that it applies everywhere it needs to apply.”
Also during the meeting, the council agreed to participate with the City of Birmingham on a drainage project on Montclair Road near Birmingham’s Ramsay Park. The project would be done in conjunction with Mountain Brook’s TAP sidewalk project.
“There's a drainage ditch right there along the road that's really eroded,” said Nathan Currie of Sain Associates. “The City of Birmingham reached out and it sounds like they have maybe a pipe kind of failing on the road there. They're trying to do some drainage improvements.
“They're offering to construct that segment of the sidewalk,” Currie continued. “Basically, they'll fill the ditch. They'll build the sidewalk in the right of way. Mountain Brook's TAP project is tied to either end of it. That way you don't have to impact the park, we don't have to get through the extra environmental requirements and they're requesting $50,000.”
In other action, the council:
- Appointed Kitty Rogers Brown to the editorial board of The Mountain Brook Reporter, a quarterly newsletter.
- Approved a liquor license for Little Betty Steak Bar in Lane Parke. The owner announced that the establishment will have a soft opening on Friday.
- Approved the creation of a temporary records clerk position for the police department. Chief Jaye Loggins said the task is to purge paper records that date back to 2009.
- Accepted proposals from Sain Associates and Schoel regarding traffic engineering at Mountain Brook Village and drainage study of three developments in the Watkins Brook Drainage basin.
“We had two proposals on the formal agenda,” City Manager Sam Gaston said. “One (was) from Sain – to look at these three developments in Mountain Brook Village in conjunction with the roundabouts, to be sure all that would work properly and one from Schoel Engineering, (to) take a comprehensive look at all three of these possible developments and their plans and how that would relate to the overall drainage plan of facilities there in Mountain Brook Village.
“It was a comprehensive look,” Gaston said. “That is exactly what they did.”
The meeting concluded with resident Lura Denson again appealing to the Council to join her in asking the Alabama Department of Transportation to alter its plan for replacing the bridge over U.S. 280 at Pump House Road.
“I would like them (ALDOT) to be held accountable for everything that they're doing to our city because it's mainly the city of Mountain Brook being impacted,” Denson said. “It's going from Hollywood Boulevard to (Interstate) 459. It makes no sense. That's not where people (motorists) are getting bogged down. Where it is is from 459 to Grandview and that in turn from Summit to Grandview. That in turn, boggs down everybody from back over there.”
Billy Pritchard, who chaired Monday’s meeting, suggested that perhaps a meeting could take place with ALDOT on the matter.
“We're happy to communicate anything that we need to communicate to them,” Pritchard said. “Unfortunately, we don't have a whole lot of say so except we can express the concerns. We're happy to do so.”
Currently the next meeting of the Mountain Brook City Council will be at 7 p.m. on Jan. 8.
