Parking battle moves on to council

Deirdre Newman

The City Council will consider Monday an apartment complex’s request

to reduce its parking by 10 spaces.

The decision falls to the council after neighbors on Manistee

Drive persuaded the Planning Commission not to allow the change.

Manistee Drive residents are fed up with the Park Mesa Village

apartment complex’s tenants’ parking on their street.

The council will consider the application from the 276-unit

apartment complex on Paularino Avenue along with a request for a

reduced landscape setback.

Off-site parking by apartment tenants has riled neighbors in other

areas of the city before, and the council has cracked down to ensure

neighborhoods are not overrun.

“Parking is definitely a difficult issue, so I want to make sure

the [Park Mesa Village] apartments do have enough parking so it

doesn’t overflow off to the neighborhood streets,” Councilman Allan

Mansoor said.

Because the complex was built in the 1970s, its parking

requirements do not conform to today’s zoning code. It has 476

spaces, but more than 600 parking spaces would be required if it were

built today.

The application calls for replacing 80 parking spaces -- 60 open

spaces and 20 carport spaces -- with 70 single-car garages in seven

buildings.

In 1992, the council approved a similar exception for the complex

to build garages on the basis that the proposed buildings wouldn’t

negatively affect adjacent properties and would buffer freeway noise,

since there are no freeway noise walls in this location. The garages

were approved, but never built.

The issue is coming back to the council because it approved the

original request, Planning Commissioner Bill Perkins said.

The Planning Commission denied the request for reduced parking on

a 4-1 vote, required Cameo Homes, which owns the property, to post

signs around the parking areas with a phone number that residents can

call to complain about parking problems, to create a parking

management plan and to get together with the nearby Avalon Bay

apartment complex to resolve parking issues in the area.

In February, the council approved the placement of “resident-only”

notices around the Villa Venetia Apartments in Mesa Verde after

neighbors complained that the owner was adding tenants at the

neighbors’ expense.

Kim Berry, who represents Cameo Homes, was not available for

comment.

* DEIRDRE NEWMAN covers Costa Mesa and may be reached at (949)

574-4221 or by e-mail at [email protected].