Why don’t they dig parking plan?

In the “don’t wish for something because you might get it” category,

some residents in the vicinity of the Pottery Shack are less than

enthused about a conceptual plan -- approved by the City Council this

month -- to double the amount of parking spots at the landmark retail

site by digging underground.

These are the very people who complain loudly and often about a

lack of employee parking in their area, which is close to hotels,

restaurants and shops.

With expanded retail and restaurant space part of the renovation

of the old pottery complex, residents understandably fear an influx

of even more employees hunting for choice, long-term parking spots on

neighborhood streets.

Residents of the area and city officials have been working for

months on a multi-pronged approach to make more parking available for

both residents and businesses in downtown and along the coast.

This creative approach apparently bore fruit, with the Pottery

Shack owner, Joe Hanauer, facing the parking issue head-on and coming

up with the expensive proposition of digging underground to create 81

parking spaces instead of the 41 that exist on the site.

The council eagerly embraced the concept, which still needs some

tweaking.

Now that a partial solution to the parking crunch may be in the

offing, there’s still opposition to the idea, with complaints that

the underground parking could be used by people other than Pottery

Shack employees. Perhaps the council can address that in the future

by requiring on-site employee parking or using incentives to assure

that employees don’t have a reason to hunt for spots in neighborhood

streets.

Others, in tortured reasoning, complain that, because Hanauer got

a parking allowance by agreeing to preserve the historic facade of

the Pottery Shack, he should not now be permitted to add parking to

the complex, because one of the original “back” structures, and

several trees, will have to be demolished.

These purists argue that the old complex must be kept as is --

even though, as an outdated facility, it sorely lacks needed parking.

The council wisely stepped around each of these arguments and

allowed Hanauer to move ahead with a plan to keep both the history of

the Pottery Shack and the livability of the neighborhood intact.