Council can tailor plan to suit needs
CITY HALL — Looking to solve the city’s parking woes, the City Council earlier this week approved an ambitious, 10-year program to significantly increase the number of parking spaces downtown.
If fully implemented, the Downtown Parking Program — estimated to cost $93 million — would increase the number of parking spaces by 1,712, the majority of which would come from the construction of two new parking structures in the vicinity of Fifth Street and the Civic Center, according to a city staff report.
The program, which will also include seismic retrofitting and upgrades to existing structures, will be completed in phases, with the council reserving the right to decrease the number of parking spaces created to fit the correlating need downtown. Before any phase of the program begins, city staff will be required to go before the council for approval, at which time the public will have opportunities to weigh in on the proposals.
The program is expected to be financed through revenue bonds paid for by increased parking fees and downtown property assessments.
The lack of parking has long been a thorn in the side of City Hall, with residents, merchants and weekend shoppers all complaining about traffic-jammed streets loaded with desperate drivers hunting for places to park. In recent surveys conducted by City Hall, residents ranked parking as the third most important issue facing Santa Monica.
“Two-thirds of residents visit downtown once a week and they feel parking is a major problem, and for employees as well,” said John Warfel, a member of the City Hall-sanctioned Downtown Parking Task Force, which was established in December 2000 and for two years studied what would be the appropriate number of spaces to meet demand.
With a goal of maintaining the current ratios of 2.1 spaces per 1,000 square feet of downtown development, the task force’s recommendation of 1,712 spaces was made to accommodate an anticipated 500,000 square feet of future commercial development.
The program was modeled after a “Park Once, Pedestrian First” model to encourage visitors to drive as little as possible. To ensure the plan’s success, the parking task force recommended City Hall create a tram system to easily transport drivers from their destinations of choice back to their cars.
The council postponed approval of the program in February after some council members expressed concern over the large number of spaces that would be created. Others felt it was necessary to wait for Councilman Ken Genser to return to the dais before a vote was made. Genser was recovering from a kidney transplant at the time of discussion.
Genser was present during this week’s debate and voted for the program because of the flexibility it offered the council, which will review the program every two years to assess progress and make adjustments based on future conditions, such as development, driving habits and mass transit construction, such as the Exposition Light Rail line.
“This plan would spread traffic around instead of it now being concentrated on Second and Fourth streets, where parking is now,” Genser said. “My view is the plan will change in the future based on need, environmental concerns and so on. That will happen. But we need to adopt this now because … we need to buy the land (for new structures) quickly because we’re not making any more of it and it’s all being bought up.
“Unless we move quickly … we won’t have the ability to buy those parcels. If we don’t decide to put structures there, the land could be sold for some profit or for some other use.”
Councilman Kevin McKeown, the lone member of the council to vote against the program, said he was not comfortable with approving spaces based on the future development downtown of 500,000 square feet. McKeown said residents have continually expressed their strong opposition to any major development in the area, and by approving the program, the council is saying it’s not listening to the public’s concerns.
McKeown feels the council should have waited until the city’s General Plan is completed some time this summer before making a decision.
Public outreach is underway to help draft the goals and objectives of the General Plan’s Land Use Element and Zoning Ordinance, which are a set of laws dictating the future of development in the city.
“Bringing more cars to downtown is not the direction we should be going,” McKeown said. “I will not be able to vote … based on 500,000 square feet of future development.”
“Bringing more cars to downtown is not the direction we should be going. I will not be able to vote … based on 500,000 square feet of future development.” — KEVIN MCKEOWN COUNCILMAN
McKeown pushed for approval of the “environmentally superior” option, which would create only 712 additional spaces by tearing down and rebuilding three five-story structures to replace Nos. 1, 3 and 6, which are considered “short structures” because they are smaller than the others in the city.
This 712-space alternative does not include any new structures.
“I think we need more parking spaces to help the merchants, to provide some relief,” said McKeown. “But in my heart, I don’t think we need 1,712.”
The first phase of the program will be retrofitting structures Nos. 2 and 4. City staff is currently working on the design phase of that project.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 11, 2006. Read the original PDF.