The Zen of Parking

By Jorge Casuso

How much parking do you need before you need more parking?

That Zen-like philosophical conundrum stumped the Planning Commission, which voted Wednesday night to take some immediate measures to address the downtown parking shortage before embarking on the search for an answer.

"Does the need for more parking perpetuate the need for more parking?" asked Commissioner Kelly Olsen.

"When do you reach a point when you have enough spaces?" asked commission chair Ken Briesch.

"How many more cars do you want to be attracting?" planning director Susan Frick asked, answering the questions with a question. "At what point does the city say, 'That's enough?' That's a question the commission and council will have to grapple with."

Unable to begin answering the question using data that is at least two years old, the commission voted to move ahead with the short-term recommendations made in a "Downtown Parking Management Study" by Kaku Associates, which analyzes existing and future parking demands around the bustling Third Street Promenade.

Among the recommendations of the study are increasing the rate the city charges for long-term monthly parking, using private parking at night and on weekends and implementing a system to let motorists know when a lot is full and direct them to lots with empty spaces. The recommendations also call for earmarking off-site parking for downtown employees.

In addition, the commission directed staff to begin identifying potential parking sites in the downtown area that could be available if the city decides to add more parking, to obtain more data and to study the environmental impacts of adding more spaces.

The updated report - which was revisited at the behest of downtown officials -- forecasts a parking shortage of as many as 2,400 spaces by 2004, compared to an initial projected shortfall of 700 spaces by 2010. It found that many downtown parking facilities currently exceed 85 percent capacity during at least some portion of a given week.

Board members of the Bayside District Corp., which runs the downtown area, said the recommendations of the report do not go far enough to address a problem that only will get worse with development. Without more parking, they warned, the downtown area's economic boom could end.

"This bubble will burst, and parking is the pin that will prick it," said Bill Imhoff, who owns property on the Promenade. "I say businesses will fail eventually if people can't come down."

"We desperately need more parking in our downtown area," said Bill Tucker, a member of the board. "We need to develop new facilities. The city may be shirking its responsibilities for more parking. We need more parking and we need it now."

That mantra was repeated by board member after board member, as several urged the city to study the possibility of replacing the six run down public parking structures - which need to be seismically retrofitted after the 1994 earthquake -- with larger facilities.

"We have the opportunity to make more parking structures," said board member Art Harris. "We have the opportunity to make lemonade out of lemons."

Business owners and neighborhood leaders decried the state of the 35-year-old parking structures, which they said are unsafe, smelly and often frequented by seedy individuals.

"We need better management for the structures," said Barbara Tenzer, whose company leases buildings in the downtown area. "You can't walk through the structures without getting scared or take an elevator without worrying if it will break down."

"You have to walk into darkened ratty structures with basically no security," said Donna Block, co-chair of Mid City Neighbors. "As a parent and a woman in the community, we need to address more parking."

Block predicted that people inevitably would continue to come to the downtown area whether there is more parking or not.

"It's like saying, 'If you don't build more toilets, people won't go,'" Block said. "It doesn't work that way."

But some planning commissioners worried that more parking will only encourage more cars, contributing to the gridlock that often builds up around the downtown core.

"My wife and I won't go near it (the Promenade)," said Breisch. "It's shoulder to shoulder people on weekends and holidays. We add another 1,000 spaces and we bring 3,000 to 4,000 more people.

"This goes to the heart of what we want this place to be. Is this a Santa Monica place or Universal City Walk?" Breisch said "We need more parking, and two years from now we'll just need more parking."

The commission also explored the possibility of holding community workshops before embarking on a long-term answer to the parking problem.

"There is a lack of input from the residents," Breisch said. "More than two-thirds of the speakers had chits filled out by the Bayside District office. It was a concerted lobbying effort. I don't think we've heard from most residents. I feel it was a one-sided hearing for the most part."

In the next 18 months, the city will add hundreds of spaces as new structures come on line. A parking structure at 100 Wilshire will free up more than 200 public spaces currently leased by employees of an office building and a new senior building going up near Wilshire and Fourth Street will add another 100 spaces in 18 months.

In addition, another parking spaces in one of the public structures will go back on line after a stairwell is replaced. "We anticipate that those spaces will be up and operating by summer," Frick said.

The city also is exploring adding between 700 and 1,000 spaces for downtown employees at the Santa Monica Civic Center, which is being expanded, and at 7th Street and Colorado, where a new structure is being built as part of the expansion of the city's bus yards.