Sydney Cromwell
City Parking Deck
The entrance to the municipal parking deck under SoHo Square and Rosewood Hall.
A lawsuit filed in 2019 by Scott Bryant and Bubba Smith, owners of the restaurants and condos on either side of City Hall, was dismissed from Jefferson County Circuit Court on Friday by Judge Carole Smitherman, just days before trial was set to start on Monday.
Bryant and Smith sued both the city of Homewood and Mike Mouron, owner of Valley Hotel, over what they claimed was a violation of their parking contract with the city due to the parking arrangement for the new hotel. Bryant and Smith own 76 parking spaces underneath City Hall. As part of the Valley Hotel’s arrangement with the city, their employees, and employees of the adjacent restaurants also owned by Mouron, must park in the public parking underneath City Hall.
In Smitherman’s ruling, she found the plaintiffs did not have a legal right to claim there had been a breach of contract with the hotel, as they do not have a contract with the hotel. Smitherman also ruled the hotel’s agreement with the city was valid.
Bryant and Smith did not dispute that the parking they complained about is public parking available to any member of the general public.
“Plaintiffs testified that ‘general public’ means ‘members of the general public,” Smitherman said.
“I don’t know if it’s any clearer than that,” Bryant said in his deposition, as stated in Smitherman’s ruling.
Because the parking is public, the plaintiffs “have no legally protected right to the public parking,” Smitherman said.
The plaintiffs asked the court to review and overturn a zoning ordinance and the city’s application of that ordinance to the hotel development, as stated in the judge’s ruling. Smitherman stated zoning ordinances are left up to municipal legislative bodies and there should not be “judicial interference unless clearly necessary,” and in this case, it is not necessary.
Bryant and Smith testified in their deposition that “they did not know of anything the city of Homewood did wrong in the adoption of the ordinance itself and that their dispute was ‘philosophical’ in nature,” the judge said in her ruling.
Smitherman dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought back to circuit court. Rod Nelson, Bryant and Smith’s attorney, did not return a call seeking comment on whether they would seek to appeal the ruling.
Homewood City Council President Alex Wyatt said the city is pleased with the result.
“We certainly were happy with the result and appreciative that the court understood the issues before it and ruled the way that it did,” Wyatt said.
Mouron said he was expecting the case to be dismissed.
“I think it was appropriate,” Mouron said. “The facts all supported it.”
