Clamor for Space Fuels Drive for Preferential Parking Districts

Cookie Takara dreads good weather. On days when the sun beams down on the beaches of Venice, the 32-year-old office manager packs up her car and flees, returning only when the beach-going hordes have gone home.

“There’s such a horrible parking problem here that it’s either do that or stay home all day and hold onto your space,� said Takara, who lives on 28th Avenue near the border of Venice and Marina del Rey. “You can’t just go out for a while and come back, because there won’t be any place left to park.�

Tired of having to plan daylong excursions to escape the parking crunch, Takara and her neighbors have petitioned the city to establish a preferential parking district in their 17-block corner of Venice. If established, the district would restrict parking for at least part of each day to residents who spend $15 per vehicle for an annual permit.

From Hollywood to Pacific Palisades, frustrated residents like Takara are turning to the city for help in easing the parking shortage in their neighborhoods. The densely developed Westside, where houses and apartments are sandwiched between busy commercial districts and popular beaches, already contains 16 of Los Angeles’ 20 active permit parking zones. Eight more have been proposed. In addition, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica have their own permit parking programs.

Richard Jaramillo, the transportation engineer in charge of Los Angeles’ preferential parking program, estimates that 10 to 20 more petitions are being circulated by residents who want to establish permit parking in their neighborhoods.

“We’re getting more and more requests every day,� Jaramillo said. “If it keeps on like this, it’s possible the whole Westside could become a series of permit parking districts.�

Few people seem pleased by the prospect. Transportation engineers emphasize that permit parking is a short-term solution and say the answer to shortages lies in increasing the number of spaces that businesses must provide. Residents complain about having to pay for the right to park near their homes. Merchants fear that the lack of convenient street parking will drive customers away. Even Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, the father of Los Angeles’ permit parking ordinance, characterizes the process as “painful.�

“Sometimes I wonder why I did it,� Yaroslavsky said, referring to his sponsorship of the ordinance, which the City Council adopted in 1979. “The creation of a permit parking district is a very painful exercise for a neighborhood. . . . It’s imperfect, but I don’t know a better system.�

Permit parking also has unequivocal fans.

‘Good Old Days’

“Our neighborhood is back to the way it was in the good old days,� said Irving D. Hirschfield, a resident of the Fox Hills Drive area, where the streets used to be jammed with cars owned by people who work in nearby Century City. The neighborhood, bounded by Santa Monica, Beverly Glen and Olympic boulevards, became the city’s first permit parking district in 1981, and the district was later expanded south to Pico Boulevard. “It took two years to get it established, but it was worth it,� Hirschfield said.

To establish a permit parking district, two-thirds of the residents on each block in at least a six-block area must sign a petition. The Los Angeles Department of Transportation then conducts a parking survey of the area by checking license plates with the Department of Motor Vehicles to see if the majority of vehicles belong to non-residents. If the survey shows that 75% of the area’s parking spaces are full during peak hours and that 25% of the cars belong to non-residents, a public hearing is scheduled.

After the hearing, the Department of Transportation makes a recommendation to the City Council’s Transportation and Traffic Committee, made up of council members Michael Woo, Pat Russell and Yaroslavsky. The council decides whether to establish a district, usually about a year and a half after petitions are turned in because of a backlog of parking proposals, Jaramillo said.

Takara and her neighbors in Venice face an even longer wait because the proposed district lies within the coastal zone and must also be approved by the California Coastal Commission. Since voters passed an initiative in 1972 declaring the shoreline “a natural resource belonging to all the people,� the city must replace each parking space it takes away from beachgoers, based on the rationale that a lack of street parking hinders beach access, said Tom Conner, Los Angeles’ principal transportation engineer.

“The question is how many spaces we’ll have to provide (for beach-goers),� Conner said. “We’re proposing a one-for-one trade, but the commission may ask for two spaces for every one that goes to permit parking.�

Eventually, the whole area between the border of Santa Monica and the Marina del Rey channel up to Washington Boulevard will become a series of permit parking districts, Conner said. But the city has to build replacement parking lots, largely with Proposition A funds, before the Coastal Commission will approve the districts. Passed by voters in 1980, Proposition A established a half-cent sales tax to support transportation projects.

The first lot opened with 132 spaces in the Venice Boulevard median on Memorial Day Weekend. A shuttle will ferry visitors to the beach every 15 minutes between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. on weekends and holidays.

Meanwhile, Takara said the parking situation is worse than it was in October, 1985, when she submitted the Venice neighborhood’s petition.

Across town on Melrose Avenue, nightclub owners and restaurateurs are fighting a proposed district bounded by Fairfax Avenue on the east, La Cienega Boulevard on the west and Willoughby and Rosewood avenues on the north and south, respectively. As in many other districts, non-residents would be permitted to park during the day for two-hour periods, and major thoroughfares would not be posted. Businesses that cater to nighttime crowds would feel the crunch most since permit parking would go into effect after 6 p.m., said Eitan Kushner, a deputy to Yaroslavsky.

Mark Lonow, owner of the Improvisation Comedy Club, has vowed to mount a campaign to remove Yaroslavsky and other council members who support permit parking if the district is established. He said he has been approached by businessmen and women from all over the Westside who are angry about permit parking.

“We’ll lose 20% to 30% of our business if this district goes through,� Lonow said, “and the price of renting parking lots from another business will go sky high.�

Lawrence and Cornelia August also oppose a permit parking district in the Melrose area, but for different reasons. A retired couple in their 70s with a large family living nearby, the Augusts object to having to provide permits for their guests. Residents can buy two annual guest permits per household for $10 each, and one-day guest passes for $1 each. The cost of ignoring permit parking restrictions can be prohibitive: Violators are charged $28 per infraction for up to five infractions, after which the vehicle is rendered immobile by a device known as a Denver boot, which is attached to one of its wheels.

Residents’ Complaints

“We’ve lived here for 42 years,� Cornelia August said. “Maybe we’re being selfish because I know some people can’t even find a spot, but I don’t think we should be the ones that have to pay.�

Francis Dionne does not relish the prospect of buying permits either, but unlike the Augusts, he signed a petition in favor of the district. Dionne lives four houses away from Melrose Avenue and said he has a hard time finding a place to park.

“You don’t just own a house, you own a neighborhood,� said Dionne, a truck driver who has lived in the area for 22 years. “Our taxes over the years built this city and we have the right to park here.�

In a 1977 case that established the legality of preferential parking, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a community has the right to create a permit parking district to reduce traffic, congestion, litter, pollution and other environmental problems, “thus encouraging reliance on car pools and mass transit.� Shortly after, permit parking districts sprung up around the Washington area where the case originated, and in other parts of the country.

Two years later, a study of a permit parking district in Alexandria, Va., conducted by researchers from the Urban Institute, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, concluded that the district did little to improve the parking problem or to encourage the use of mass transit. The Alexandria City Council had to expand its boundaries because commuters simply parked in adjoining residential neighborhoods, said Jerry Miller, a senior research assistant at the Urban Institute who worked on the study.

“It didn’t solve the problem,� Miller said. “It just moved it. And that’s what’s happening all around the country.�

District Near UCLA

Several districts in Los Angeles have also expanded or are planning expansion, either because commuters and shoppers began parking on the fringes of existing districts or because new development, such as a mini-mall, created a parking shortage in adjacent neighborhoods. Districts have to be large enough so that the Department of Transportation does not have to hold frequent public hearings on proposed expansions, but small enough to restrict parking to area residents, Jaramillo said.

A 59-block district on the eastern border of UCLA was so big that residents who lived near Wilshire Boulevard were using their permits to park close to campus, according to transportation engineers. The parking shortage also may have been exacerbated by the practice of selling permits to students, which is illegal. On May 1, the City Council voted to split the district in two.

“We resent being an extended parking lot for UCLA,� said Don Waldman, chairman of Holmby-Westwood Homeowners Assn.’s parking committee.

UCLA has 19,213 spaces and an enrollment of about 33,000, said Charles B. Cuenod, assistant manager for the campus parking service, who acknowledged that the residents “have quite a problem.�

Permit parking helps alleviate the problem by eliminating outsiders from the competition for spaces but is not a panacea, said Ray Davis, Santa Monica’s city parking and traffic engineer. Santa Monica has established 10 permit parking districts since its ordinance was enacted in 1980.

Municipal Code

Roger Allington, deputy director of Beverly Hills’ Transportation Department, views permit parking as a “necessary interim thing until you can get people to car-pool or until you increase the supply of spaces� by requiring businesses to provide more parking or by building public lots. Beverly Hills has established 25 districts since its ordinance was enacted in 1978.

“On the positive side, permit parking does force businesses to get serious about providing parking for their employees and customers,� said Conner, Los Angeles’ principal transportation engineer. “That’s the long-term solution.�

Conner said that if businesses were required to provide parking based on the types of services offered instead of on square footage, there would be more room to park on the street. The Los Angeles Municipal Code requires most commercial enterprises to provide two parking spaces per 1,000 square feet. Throughout most of the city, an upholstery shop and a restaurant of equal size would have to provide the same number of spaces, even though the restaurant generates more traffic. Health spas have to provide five spaces per 1,000 square feet under an amendment adopted by the council in June.

However, in 13 designated land-use areas, the city code requires parking space based on the type of commercial use. Restaurants in these areas, such as the Pico-Sepulveda-Westwood Corridor, have to provide 16 spaces per 1,000 square feet.

Yaroslavsky has proposed two other amendments to the code. One would increase the number of spaces that restaurants have to provide to 20 spaces per 1,000 square feet, and the other would raise the parking requirement for most other businesses to three spaces per 1,000 square feet. But Yaroslavsky said that even if the council passes the restaurant amendment, which it has previously rejected, existing businesses would not be affected.

“Most of the Westside was built before the city had a code,� he said, “and the early code permitted small businesses (with less than 7,500 square feet) to get away without having to provide any parking at all.�

Stan Kyker, executive vice president of the California Restaurant Assn., said restaurants can’t afford to provide more parking and might be forced to close if the city toughens its requirements. Kyker also said he is not fond of permit parking.

“I curse at them (permit parking signs) every time I go to park,� he said.

But permit parking has not lost its allure for some Westsiders.

“The neighborhood still wants it,� Takara said.