Officials juggle competing parking interests in the city
As available parking continues to disappear, residents throughout the city are taking back their neighborhoods and their parking spaces.
At least half of the city’s eight square miles is dedicated specifically for residents to park their cars in front of their homes, making side streets off limits to the general public.
Each year, hundreds of people come before the Santa Monica City Council asking for it to give them their own “preferential parking” zone because the pressures of thriving businesses surrounding them is ruining their quality of life. And more often than not, the city council gives them their space.
While some believe the zones are elit-ist and only serve as a band aid to the city’s larger parking problem, residents who live in these dedicated areas say their lives have been changed for the better. It’s changed the city’s budget too. About 20,000 residential parking permits are issued every year and at $15 a pop, the city brings in about $300,000 in revenue. That doesn’t include the hundreds of $38 tickets that are issued every year to motorists who are caught parking in the zones without a permit.
There are about 50 preferential parking zones throughout the city, with the first one created in the 1980s near the beach. Considered extremely controversial at the time, the city council dedicated certain streets to residents there because beach goers were taking up all the available spaces, leaving residents circling their neighborhoods to find a place to park.
Once the precedent was set, droves of other neighborhoods located next to commercial areas came to council chambers asking for the same treatment. Preferential parking zones then popped up near large office buildings, hospitals, the high school and Santa Monica College, the city’s largest zone.
Each time residents go before the city council, the same emotional pleas are heard — they can’t find a place to park even remotely near their home because employees of nearby businesses are filling up the streets. Noise, traffic, safety and inconvenience are all issues that have proved detrimental to their quality of life, residents say.
Depending on what the issues and needs are of residents, the city council will cut off public parking on streets during certain times of the day. Some zones allow only two-hour parking, which prevents people from parking in front of homes all day or all night. Other zones, like the ones strung together in the Sunset Park neighborhood near the SMC campus, don’t allow parking any time of the day. But often times, those streets end up empty while residents are at work, which has drawn criticism from some who call the entire practice elitist.
“It’s like ‘this is my street and this is your street,’ it’s out of hand,” said Donna Block, who lives and works near 17th Street and Wilshire Boulevard, where another preferential parking zone is being considered. “It’s a fraud. It continues to take over.”
The council sees about four requests for preferential parking zones a year. The latest one approved was last month on Then there’s what city officials call the “monster study area,” which roughly extends from Margarita Avenue and Fourth Street to 17th Street, and over to Wilshire Boulevard and back to Fourth Street. Although the zones are identified by sections, if they were to be approved over time, it would be the largest preferential parking area in the city.
The area includes several blocks that are predominately residential homes north of Montana Avenue, and a large area to the south between Montana Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard that consists of densely populated apartment buildings. Those areas are increasingly feeling the pressure of prosperous businesses along commercial corridors whose employees and customers use the neighborhoods as parking lots.
City officials decided that because there have been five requests for preferential parking in the area, they would study the entire section. As more requests for preferential parking started to file into City Hall over recent years, officials changed the way they handled studying preferential parking zones, said Lucy Dyke, a city transportation planning manager.
If one block requested a zone, it would take between six and nine months to study the area with traffic consultants counting cars, examining parking patterns and crunching the data. Then the next block would request a zone and another study would have to be completed, taking another six to nine months. So now officials look at entire “zones,” and sections get pre-approved.
Once two-thirds of residents on a block sign a petition asking for a zone, they officially go before the city council for approval. Then there are a host of neighborhood meetings to air out all of the concerns.
“We try to make a record that’s based on the data and the city ordinance,” said Ruth Harper, a city transportation plan-ning manager. “We try to adapt the regulations to address the needs of the people.”
It is evident that competing interests between business owners and residents make preferential parking a necessary evil, some say.
Last month, the city hosted a meeting for those who live and work in the “monster study area” to discuss what could happen and allow city officials to listen to the issues from all sides. About 13,000 residents were invited to the meeting through a flyer in the mail and about 120 people showed up.
“This is a zone that has a variety of opinions,” Dyke said. “There have been a few petitions for this area, but we have been hearing for years that people need parking over there.”
The meeting became heated at times between business owners and residents who believe that parking should be made available for them. Merchants often times are against preferential parking because they have no other way to provide parking to their employees.
The Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce sued the city last year claiming preferential parking zones on residential side streets adjacent to Santa Monica Boulevard, where many of the city’s autodealerships are located, infringe on local merchants’ abilitiy to conduct business. So far the chamber has lost the first round in court but it has appealed the court’s decision.
As Montana Avenue continues to attract shoppers, neighborhoods adjacent to the commercial zone continue to feel the pressure. It is common to see waiters and waitresses parking on Idaho Avenue and other side streets at 5 p.m. to begin their shift. But when residents return home from their day jobs, all the parking has been gobbled up by those employees on Montana Avenue.
“What we hear from every single meeting is residents who bring up the point that the restaurant on the corner used to be less busy,” Dyke said. “Residents feel the street belongs to them. In general, we share their views with them, but the council’s decision on preferential parking really reflect taking advantage of the resources for parking in the city.”
The pressure of available parking puts the city council in a precarious position because while politicians try to accommodate all of their constituents, they have to deal with very different issues and competing interests.
Because Santa Monica is mostly made up of dense neighborhoods with old apartment buildings that don’t provide enough underground parking garages, and as many as four people living together who all have cars, there is just isn’t enough parking for everyone, said City Councilwoman Pam O’Connor.
“I’m at a point where we shouldn’t have anymore zones,” she said. “We are going to be one big preferential parking zone.
“I understand both sides of the issue. I get a lot of letters from both sides, some say ‘survival of the fittest,’others say they deserve parking in front of their homes,” she added.
Some people also believe the problem of finding available parking will never go away and preferential parking zones only exacerbate the problem because it just shifts the burden to another part of town.
“It’s like a domino effect, and it pushes it to a point,” Dyke said.
Citizens like Block, the business owner and resident on 17th Street and Wilshire Boulevard, believe the city needs to provide parking lots for businesses either off-site or under their stores.
She suggests that the city consider using the small parking lots it owns for commercial uses, instead of planning to build affordable housing on them. They could either be used by businesses or residents on a permit-issued basis, Block said.
Mayor Mike Feinstein said the city is considering putting a ballot measure before voters to authorize the city to purchase vacant parking lots throughout the city — but whether they are used for affordable housing or parking remains to be seen.
Either way, it’s going to be a fight, and politicians are in the middle of a battle that doesn’t appear to have an end.
“The council is trying to do what’s best for all the interests in the community,” Dyke said. “Parking will always be an issue because there are more people with more cars.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 25, 2002. Read the original PDF.