The crunch of parking

Barbara Diamond

Mid-Laguna residents are hoping city officials will help them iron

out a parking crunch in their area that has caused residents and

businesses to compete for scarce parking spots.

City officials met Jan. 25 with residents and business

representatives to begin a collaborative effort to resolve

residential street parking problems in the area between Thalia Street

and Bluebird Canyon from South Coast Highway to Temple Terrace.

Some in the business community believe a parking structure is the

best way to resolve the issues.

“Whatever we do, we have to do right,” said Councilman Steven

Dicterow who chaired the meeting. “We want to thank the council for

this effort,” said Tom Garvin, president of the Flatlanders

Neighborhood Assn., who brought the issues to the Council’s

attention. “It is great that you gave us this time.”

Dicterow volunteered to serve on a council subcommittee to further

study the problem and asked Councilwoman Jane Egly to join him. The

subcommittee will need approval of the council.

About 50 people attended the workshop, conducted in a less formal

format than the usual council meetings.

The council came down off the dais and set no time limits on

speakers, who were allowed more than one shot at the hand-held

microphone that was passed around the audience.

Darrylin Girvin reviewed a chart prepared by Flatlanders

volunteers which showed the number of businesses with inadequate or

no parking for customers or employees. The lack drives them into the

neighborhood streets where they don’t have to feed meters, Girvin

said. .

“This causes parking and circulation difficulties, [affects]

safety, and homeowners can’t find a place to park in front of their

own homes.” Girvin said. “We estimate that 300 to 400 employees are

parking in the neighborhood. The Pottery Shack will add another 50 to

80.”

The proposed remodel of the Pottery Shack brought the Flatlanders

parking problem to a head.

“The greatest impacts are the successful businesses,” Flatlander

Rik Lawrence said. “They have outgrown their space. We expect the

same thing from the Pottery Shack. Before it opens, it will have

outgrown its space.

“We want the businesses to be successful, but everyone has to get

together and work it out.”

Part of the problem is that many businesses in the older

commercial district have not been required to provide their own

parking spots for customers.

Parking for many of the businesses in the Flatlanders’ area was

“grandfathered in.” That means that the businesses were given credit

for the number of spaces which became required for their kind of

business when the city established its parking codes.

“In early Laguna, lots of apartments and businesses were built

without any parking,” Mayor Elizabeth Pearson-Schneider said. “When

we established parking standards later, credits were grandfathered

in, based on the uses.”

One parcel was credited with more than 150 spaces, without one

foot of real parking. If the uses stay the same, the grandfathering

stays valid.

Flatlanders Environmental Officer Roger von Butow called them

“phantom spaces”, a phrase coined by former Councilman Wayne

Peterson.

“Grandfathering is a state law over which we have no

jurisdiction,” Dicterow said.

Parking requirements are included in conditional use permits

issued for businesses that require them, and continue to be in force

while the use continues.

NO QUICK FIX

Representatives of the Laguna Beach Chamber of Commerce and

mid-town business owners, who attended the workshop, expressed

willingness to work on a solution to the Flatlanders problems.

“We are open and eager to solve the problems,” said John Gates of

the Surf & Sand hotel. “There is no easy fix.”

Gates admitted he was frustrated because private parking lots that

are used only during the day are not available for joint usage by

businesses that need additional parking at night.

“Insurance is costly for businesses to allow parking on private

lots,” said Councilwoman Cheryl Kinsman.

Kinsman and her husband own a business in South Laguna with

plentiful parking. She said she was advised by her insurance agent

not to lease the parking area, and that neighbors vehemently opposed

the notion.

“The business community wants to grow and prosper,” Chamber

Executive Director Verlaine Crawford said. “The bottom line is that

more will come and we have to find a way to park them. The only way

is a parking structure.”

The City Council is pursuing peripheral parking at the north and

south ends of town to augment public parking.

“Don’t get frustrated if we are moving slowly,” Dicterow told the

workshop participants.

He said the job of the sub-committee and the participants would be

to define the problems and the causes and then reach conclusions,

which could be applied to other neighborhoods.

“When we fix your problem, we will fix Laguna’s problem,”

Councilwoman Toni Iseman told the Flatlanders.

“Let the local businesses know that it is to everyone’s advantage

to make Laguna a parkable town.

Egly wasn’t so sure that was the right road to travel.

“Maybe we should be looking at making it not a parkable town,”

Egly said. “Laguna is not a city that was designed for large masses

of cars.”

Pearson-Schneider said the city should start by conducting an

inventory of business parking spaces and compliance CUPs on both

sides of South Coast Highway and Glenneyre Street.

A Downtown parking and traffic management study by a consultant is

underway.

Those who would like to participate in future workshops can be

added to a contact list by sending their names, home and e-mail

addresses and telephone numbers to [email protected] or by

calling (949) 497-0705.

The next meeting is set for 5 p.m., Feb. 16 at City Hall, 505

Forest Ave.