Parking redux

Downtown parking debate continues even as Marsh Street expansion moves forward

BY TRACY IDELL HAMILTON

Downtown.

It's San Luis Obispo's crown jewel, her pride and joy. It wins Main Street awards and rates high on livability indexes. Magazine writers wax poetic over its quaint shops, famous Farmers Market, historic Mission.

We come downtown to eat and shop, to use city and county services, to attend cultural and community events.

If, that is, we can find a parking space.

Now, that sentence above will no doubt provoke howls of protest from those who insist that with more than 2,300 spaces, there is no parking shortage downtown. With massive garages on Marsh and Palm streets, plus dozens of surface lots ranging from a few spaces to more than a hundred, it's true that if you look long enough, and don't expect to park within a block of your destination, you'll always find a place to park.

But if you're squeezed for time, if you've got a bunch of kids or packages to deal with, if you're a low-mobility senior, or if, admit it, maybe you're just lazy, then driving around and around or parking blocks away from your destination might not be an option. Maybe you've even driven away in frustration, swearing that you won't come back downtown.

It's for those people, and those situations, that many downtown business owners, not to mention patrons, would like to see more parking built downtown.

But issues of whether or not to build more parking, where to build it, what alternatives should also be funded, and where that funding should come from have become so fraught with clashing political and philosophical proposals that little has been done at all.

Until now.

On Tuesday, March 3, the San Luis Obispo City Council voted 4-1 to move forward on a parking garage expansion that will add 232 spaces to the downtown mix, turning the surface parking lots behind the post office and Law's Hobby Center and the Parable bookstore into one large garage attached to the current Marsh Street garage. Councilmember Christine Mulholland opposed the expansion in her first vote on a project that has been in the works for more than six years.

Opponents of the expansion argued that the location will further clog traffic, given it's proximity to the downtown core; that the building, given the city's budget restraints, will be ugly; and that the garage does not conform to the cultural heritage of the area.

The project has always faced a strongly divided council, with council members John Ewan and Jan Howell Marx continually opposing it. With the election of Mulholland, it looked as if the two would finally have the votes necessary to kill the expansion once and for all.

But Ewan and Marx surprised some constituents Tuesday night with their votes to send the project back out to bid. Both indicated that if the project was beginning from scratch, they would indeed vote against it. But both also cited what Ewan called a "paradigm shift" that has taken place downtown. Marx even went so far as to say she now finally believes that there is, or will be once the Copeland development goes in, a true parking shortage downtown.

With an eye on the redevelopment of Court Street, Ewan said finding a new location for another garage "would probably take another 10 years–and that's just probably not a good idea." So having stated reservations about location and traffic, Ewan gritted his teeth, furrowed his brow, and said he was ready "to move to one side, and let this project go forward."

Eugen Jud, a civil engineer who teaches in the civil and environmental engineering department in Cal Poly and who has been a long-time opponent of the expansion in favor of alternatives such as parking demand reduction, said Ewan "will have an awful lot of explaining to do. He was elected in part on his position against the garage."

Jud has argued repeatedly that there is no shortage of parking downtown, and he says he has statistics on his side, to prove it. What the downtown needs far more than another garage, he argues, is a sound parking management plan that incorporates parking demand reduction programs and an increased reliance on alternative transportation.

If there's one thing (and perhaps only one thing, given the parking and anti-parking rhetoric that's flown around council chambers in the last several years) that everyone can agree on, it is this: The downtown is desperately in need of a cohesive, consensual parking management plan.

Jud and some on the council say that a parking management plan is just the beginning. The city needs to revisit its circulation element, its transportation plan, its pedestrian plan. "We need clearly defined goals that the majority of the public support. And we just don't have that. The city goes from piecemeal project to piecemeal project, with no overall philosophy or plan,"

said Jud.

There is a draft of a proposed parking management plan for downtown. It's known as the Parking and Downtown Access Plan, and it is, by most accounts, a mess. PDAP, as it's known, has been in the works for years, with input from city staff, downtown business interests, and alternative transportation advocates. The plan is supposed to take a three-pronged approach to solving downtown's parking situation: parking management, parking expansion, and parking demand reduction.

According to Ewan, the consulting firm contracted by help the city with the plan "never wants to set foot in our town again. They don't want to work with us ever again."

The factions and infighting, he said, have made for an almost-final document that no one is happy with. "Everyone is to blame for that," Ewan said.

The latest council will once again revisit the 89-page document, he said, and pull out "the good stuff." But given the issue's history, agreeing on what the good stuff is will be difficult at best.

For instance, Marx' statement that she finally does believe there is a shortage of brick-and-mortar parking is a new one. Even Ewan, while voting for the plan, told New Times last week he still does not believe there is an actual shortage.

That assertion sends Mike Spangler's eyes rolling heavenward. Spangler, a downtown business and property owner who can be seen riding his bike all over downtown, has been battling the city over parking for the last 15 years. His philosophy is simple, he says: "To make downtown more pedestrian-friendly, it's imperative to remove vehicles from the streets. And the only way to do that is to put them in parking structures."

While demand reduction is an important and worthwhile goal, he said, it cannot come at the expense of those who will never, or cannot, get out of their cars. Alternatives, such as van pooling or busing, ought to be developed, but they ought to be paid for out of transit or general funds, not parking funds, he says.

Deborah Holley, administrator of the Downtown Association, agrees. Like Spangler, she said she understands the city's need for a management plan that reduces demand for parking. But additional parking is imperative, she said. By the city's own standard, which determines the number of spaces necessary based on retail square footage, downtown is currently "underparked," she said.

The Downtown Association is made up of businesses within the downtown zone who are assessed fees that go toward events such as Farmers Market, and Concerts in the Plaza–events designed to highlight downtown and draw people in. Many business owners within the association, Holley says, are frustrated with the lack of movement on the city's part to build more parking. An article Holley wrote three years ago addressing the parking issue is as relevant today as the day she wrote it, she says.

New commercial development being built on the fringes of town makes it even more crucial that locals and tourists alike perceive there is plenty of available parking downtown, Holley, said. She estimates a need for as many as 700 new spaces, even after the Marsh Street expansion.

Like many downtown business owners, Spangler is supremely frustrated that members of the city council will not acknowledge what he calls today's reality: that right now, this very minute, there is a lack of convenient parking downtown. Whether that lack is just perceived (as by Ewan, Jud, and others contend it is) or real doesn't really matter, he noted. If tourists or locals perceive a lack of parking and stay away from downtown, the result is the same: Downtown's economy shrinks, businesses leave, and former patrons are left reminiscing about the downtown’s good old days. It's happened before, Spangler warns, and the city is foolish to think it can't happen again.

A member of the Downtown Association’s parking committee for years, Spangler recently resigned from the group. By its nature the association must remain as apolitical as possible, given its symbiotic relationship with the city, said Spangler.

So instead of making waves within the committee, he's struck out on his own, with financial backing from many fellow downtown business and property owners. "I don't want to strain the relationship between the council and the Downtown Association," he says.

The newly-created Downtown Coalition will seek political solutions to the parking issue. Coalition members are tired of inaction and flip-flopping on the part of this and previous councils. "The councils are creating stall and sprawl," he said. "They do nothing, and the problem just gets worse."

The council’s decision to implement the "low-hanging fruit"–ideas that will cost little in money or infrastructure improvements to implement–of a parking management plan is just great, Spangler says, but will create more problems in the interim.

For instance, everyone agrees that there are two distinct groups of parkers: long-term, eight-hour folks who work downtown, and short-term shoppers and tourists. Everyone also agrees that long-term parkers should be encouraged to get out of the prime spaces (including the Marsh Street garage) and park on the fringes, freeing up core spaces for short-termers.

Incentives to do that include raising the maximum fee from the current $3 charged at the garages, reducing the number of free minutes (it's 90 now), and jacking up fines for expired meters. While that might move long-term parkers out of the core, said Spangler, the only place they have to go right now is into the downtown neighborhoods. "We need to be good neighbors," Spangler said. We can't just push parkers out to the neighborhoods. We have to solve our own problems."

For the current council, the proposed transit center and parking garage on Santa Rosa Street would solve the long-term-parkers problem. But Spangler wonders if that project, especially given current business owners' indication that they do not want to sell their property, will take as long–or even longer–than the Marsh Street expansion. Downtown doesn't have 10 years to wait, he says.

More parking must be built, he contends. And doing that takes more than just council approval, it takes money. That raises another bone of contention among the parking factions: Whose money is it, and what can it be used for?

While cities can pay for public parking in a variety of ways, San Luis Obispo has chosen to deposit all monies collected from parking meters, garage fees, and fines into the city's parking enterprise fund. The idea is that parking should pay for itself in the same way that water and sewer funds do.

And it does, say parking officials. But Spangler says the city has lost sight of its original obligation to downtown businesses. The downtown area is zoned "CC"–Central Commercial. The original idea, he said, was that downtown businesses, instead of having to provide parking for their customers on a business-by-business basis, which would create many tiny lots, increase congestion, and spread out the core, would pay in-lieu fees to the city, which would provide parking for all the businesses.

Those in-lieu fees also go into the parking enterprise fund, which a previous city council designated a citywide fund, according to Councilman Ken Schwartz. But like Spangler, Schwartz believes that fees, funds, and fines collected downtown should stay downtown. Instead, the money is going to help maintain other parking districts in the city, like the newly created North Highland district near Cal Poly and the Railroad Square district adjacent to the Amtrak station.

"The council is looking to solve Cal Poly's parking problems with money collected downtown," said Spangler, referring to the council's recent decision to use parking funds rather than general funds as seed money to start up the North Highlands parking district. "Meanwhile, we haven't even solved our own problems. This isn't tax money, it's a user fee. It should be spent where it's collected."

But Tim Bochum, deputy public works director, said those districts do pay for themselves. "We’ve tracked that money. Railroad Square, for instance, does cover its own costs." And in-lieu fees do stay downtown, he said.

They may stay downtown, but downtown hasn't seen any substantial additional parking created, with the exception of a few spaces here, a dozen spaces there, since the garages were built in the 1980s.

But in-lieu fees don't nearly cover the cost of building additional parking. Right now, a business that expands or moves into the downtown must pay in-lieu fees of $4,000 per space, the number of spaces determined by the size of the business. The cost of a single parking space can be more than four times that amount, say city officials. The Marsh Street expansion, thanks in part to years-long delays, will have spaces that cost $30,000-plus apiece, according to Keith Opalewski, the city's parking manager.

The fees are so low, said Councilman Schwartz, "because the community is in love with downtown." No one wanted to discourage potential businesses from opening downtown with high in-lieu fees, he said. But now a rise in those fees is likely, say officials–part of the "low-hanging-fruit" approach to parking management.

Increased flow into the parking fund may only exacerbate another tussle between factions. Holley, Spangler, and Schwartz agree that parking money should not be spent on alternative transportation options. Create the programs, they say, but use transit funds or general funds–at least until a program has been proved to successfully relieve parking demand.

Pointing to half-empty buses–even the free downtown trolley is often empty–parking proponents reiterate that it is difficult to change people's habits. And spending parking money in a social experiment on downtown shoppers is inappropriate, they say.

Even Mulholland admitted that she's never taken the bus. "It's not convenient for me," she said. But like Ewan and Jud, she disagrees that there's really a parking shortage downtown. People may have to walk a block or two, she said, but they do that when they park in malls to shop at big box stores, too.

Even as they voted for the expansion, Ewan and Marx, joined by Mulholland, implored the city to explore more parking alternatives. "So many things haven't even been looked at," Mulholland said.

The programs that have been implemented do work, say proponents. Ride-On ridership continues to increase, Ewan said, and he noted that the city's own trip reduction plan has reduced single car trips by city employees by 15 percent.

What the city must do in the future, Jud said, if it's ever going to agree on a philosophy behind a parking management plan, is include the public in hearings and meetings, to explore all the options and alternatives for parking downtown.

That's all good, said Spangler–as long as there are enough brick-and-mortar parking spaces for those who need them. If downtown doesn't get a shot in the arm soon, it's in danger of becoming stale, he said.

Mulholland does not agree that the downtown is in danger of becoming stale, that it needs a shot in the arm–a shot of parking, that is. "I'm no business expert," she said, "but I have this gut feeling that downtown is doing just fine." Æ

Reporter Tracy Hamilton likes to make little paper hats out of her parking tickets.