ST. PETERSBURG — A real estate investor who planned to turn a crime-ridden motel into a hip food hall says the project was doomed by the city's "inability to think outside the box.''

Jonathan Daou said Tuesday that he reluctantly scrapped his plans after city officials told him he would have to meet current parking codes — a requirement that would have left him with just four parking spaces unless he went through a lengthy hearing process with no guarantee of the outcome.

"The history is that there was an untold amount of criminal activity and yet they never closed that motel down because of parking,'' Daou said. "Yet here comes a development with a huge reception to it and now they have a problem with the parking.''

In 2014, Daou paid $825,000 for the Monticello, an aging, run-down motel at 1700 Fourth St. N. Last fall, to great acclaim, he announced plans to renovate it into an attractive food hall in which chefs and independent contractors working out of the 18 rooms would prepare meals for take-out or to be eaten in a covered courtyard.

"There are a lot of motels in disrepair so the idea was, hey, if this can be done, we could be a model for what to do with these beat-up old motels,'' said Daou, who has found new uses for other buildings in St. Petersburg and New York.

Daou had an initial meeting with city officials that he says went well. They seemed amenable to letting him use the existing parking spaces at the motel.

At a subsequent meeting, Daou says, he was told that the nine spaces on the 18th Avenue N side of the 64-year-old motel were smaller than legally allowed under current city codes.

"I said to (city officials), 'In all this time you couldn't shut down a place that was exploiting people?' " Daou recalled. "There was prostitution, drug activity, one person told me he found a dead body. In all this time you couldn't say 'your parking is (too small).' Instead they chose to keep the hotel functioning.''

Complying with city codes would have shrunk the parking on the north side to just four spaces. Moreover, the 10 spaces on the motel's south side, on 17th Avenue, extended onto city-owned of right-of-way. To use those, Daou would have had to go through a time-consuming process and face the possible opposition of residents around nearby Crescent Lake.

Rather than risk that, Daou decided to pull the plug on his food motel.

"I would get zero spaces on 17th until I had a hearing and four parallel spaces on 18th; that's all they could guarantee me and that's why I never submitted plans,'' he said. "I finally succumbed to the idea that you can't really work with them on projects like this.''

Asked to respond to Daou's remarks, city zoning official Elizabeth Abernethy said, "No comment,'' but added: "We determined there was a way for them to proceed and we outlined the process they would need to go through and that would have included a hearing. It's a matter of can it meet code or can it not meet code.''

Daou is now selling the vacant motel, which remains a fenced-in mess with ripped tar paper flapping on the roof. The listing agent said it is under contract for close to the $1.2 million asking price, which would give Daou a profit on his investment even after spending more than $30,000 on plans and a permit to demolish an extra building on the site.

He says, however, that he would have preferred to bring the project to fruition.

"I had hours of meetings with vendors, so many promised to be in there. It's very sad.''

Architect Carl Young, who worked on the plans and attended the city meetings with Daou, is in agreement.

"What a great concept,'' he said. "There were a lot of people really excited about it.''

Contact Susan Taylor Martin at smartin@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8642. Follow @susanskate.