A controversial plan to allow the Santa Rosa Plaza mall to charge for parking has been delayed by Mayor Ernesto Olivares, who says the city first needs to make sure its own parking programs make sense.
The outpouring of opposition to the mall's plan included plenty of criticism of the city's own parking policies, convincing Olivares that the council and the public would benefit from a review of the downtown parking program.
"This has really angered people" Olivares said. "It's really turning into a big, big issue for our community."
The council was scheduled Tuesday to consider a tentative deal to allow mall owner Simon Property Group to charge for parking in its five garages in exchange for a study of ways to improve public access through the downtown mall.
Council members initially seemed supportive of the request. The garages are private property and the city charges for parking in all of its five garages and 10 surface lots.
But at a council subcommittee meeting last week some business owners urged caution, and Olivares said he agreed.
"I said &‘wait a minute, let's take a breath. What's the urgency of getting this done Tuesday?'" he said.
Wayne Boyer, president of Powerhouse Gym on 5th Street, said he encouraged the city to do an analysis of the economic impacts before making a decision. Business owners downtown he's spoken with agreed that eliminating the last supply of free parking downtown would hurt business, he said. "I could definitely see the emotion welling up," Boyer said. "From my perspective, it was 100 percent negative."
Boyer said many of his members and employees use the mall parking garages, and requiring an employee who makes $8 an hour to pay $1 an hour for parking in a city lot makes no sense.
The city should use the outrage over the mall's request to reform shortsighted city policies, said Bernie Schwartz, long-time owner of California Luggage on 4th Street.
"As far as I'm concerned, parking is one of our biggest PR challenges downtown. It's always simmering and sometimes boiling," he said.
Schwartz said he and several other business owners downtown want the city to think creatively about parking, including lowering fees on lots that are used sparingly, such as the one at Ross and B streets across from Macy's. Instead for $1 an hour, perhaps the city should charge 25 cents and fill the lot up, he said.
Similarly, for high-demand times and areas, maybe the city should consider charging higher rates, something advocated by UCLA urban planning professor Donald Shoup during a visit to the city two years ago, Schwartz said. "I think those reforms should take place before they make any decision about Simon," Schwartz said.
But Shoup also argued that the city should consider extending meter hours past 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. to capture revenue from the busy downtown dining scene, said Cheryl Woodward, the city's deputy director of parking.
The city held several meetings with downtown business owners on the subject and "we didn't hear a lot of support for that," Woodward said.
Olivares said he asked city staff to prepare for a May 17 council study session that he expects will be "almost a history lesson."
The city established a downtown parking district in late 1950s to finance the construction of parking facilities. Downtown property owners pay additional property taxes to pay the debt on bonds sold to finance construction of garages. This year that's $515,000 in revenue, Woodward said. The mall is exempt because it built its own garages.
Operations of the district are funded through parking fees, expected to be $3.7 million next year, Woodward said. The district has about $10 million in reserves for future garages and repairs, she said. Reserves are robust because a parking garage planned for the White House site downtown never panned out, Woodward said.
Free parking comes up often as a possible economic boost for downtown merchants, Olivares said. Some think it lures shoppers, other worry that spaces near their business won't turn over.
"If we're ever going to have a discussion about how to do things differently about parking downtown, we have to understand where we are today and how we got here," he said.
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