Council Approves Employee Parking Plan

By Gene Williams
Staff Writer

March 1 -- Some residents with preferential parking privileges will be sharing their streets with nearby business employees under a first-of-its-kind pilot program approved by the City Council Tuesday night.

The unanimous 5 to 0 vote marked a significant change in the City’s residents-only preferential parking policy, although it is a tentative one. City officials say they will try the program for one year. If it works, it will likely be expanded.

“It’s been demonstrated that there are a lot of empty parking spaces during the day,” Council member Herb Katz said. “There is no reason we can’t start sharing with employees, and this is a good start.”

Under the program, 20 parking permits will be given to businesses around 10th Street and Pico Boulevard, allowing employees to park on 10th, 11th and Bay streets in the neighborhood’s preferential parking zone. A permit would be good only during the day and only on its designated street.

To qualify, a business would typically have to be in one of the area’s older buildings, which have less than enough on-site parking. No single business shall get more than five permits.

During deliberations, it was apparent that the council was ready to move forward, but also wanted to move cautiously, considering only the least far reaching of three proposed options.

“The greatest thing we are going to gain here is experience in doing this,” Council member Kevin McKeown said.

“On the one hand I feel we must move forward,” he said. “On the other hand we have to be careful not to move too far and endanger the neighborhoods.”

A politically contentious issue that has pitted businesses and the neighborhoods against each other for years, the question of employee parking had come before the council at least a half dozen times before. As usual, extensive public comment from both sides was heard during Tuesday’s hearing.

Several speakers who opposed to the idea live six blocks or more away from the pilot program area. Friends of Sunset Park president Zina Josephs explained why they are wary.

“As you can see, there is strong feeling because many of the residents spent years trying to get preferential parking to protect people from the college, and now they feel they are being encroached upon again,” Josephs said.

Following staff’s recommendations, the 20 permits approved by council represent a much scaled-down version of a plan that drew fire from residents at public meetings in January.

Under the original plan, 156 daytime permits would have gone out to businesses along Pico and Ocean Park boulevards in selected areas between 10th and 30th streets.

Speaking for the Chamber of Commerce, attorney Tom Larmore said there is nothing unreasonable about those bigger numbers.

“We think you should go to a broader test,” Larmore said. “We’re talking about a very small number of permits.”

Out of a total of 1,245 spaces counted in the original plan, Larmore said, only 421 are parked in on an average day. With the addition of 156 employee permits, he said, there would still be 668 empty spaces left.

Larmore also asked the council to address the problems of the Lindahl family, who say they are going into debt because preferential parking has made it difficult to rent out space in their building at 10th Street and Pico Boulevard. (see story)

Built in the 1930s, the Lindahls’ building has no on-site parking and always relied on neighborhood streets. In 2002, the family began a $1.2 million remodel, but, four months before it was finished, they lost their street parking when the City began a residents-only program in the neighborhood.

While the council has left the door open to the possibility of increasing employee permit parking along Pico and Ocean Park boulevards in the future, it moved Tuesday to preserve the status quo north of Montana.

Staff had considered employee parking for the Montana Avenue shops, but decided the situation there would continue working well enough as long as preferential parking was held in check.

In a four-to-one vote, the council effectively placed a moratorium on additional preferential parking north of Alta Avenue between Lincoln Boulevard and 17th Street. An exception will be made for two houses with front entries on Alta Avenue.

Council member McKeown cast the one dissenting vote. Council members Pam O’Connor and Ken Genser were absent.