Spaces remain a premium at Magnolia Park

When one-hour parking signs went up last week on Magnolia Boulevard between Lima and Avon streets, where business owners have complained customers of a new cafe are “monopolizing” area parking, Edward Yacoubian said a prayer.

“I say, ‘Thanks, Lord!’” Yacoubian said.

Yacoubian is one of 10 shop owners on the block who signed a petition asking the city to crack down on parking enforcement and add tougher parking restrictions in front of their businesses.

But a few hours after the one-hour signs went up on Sept. 26, they came back down and the old two-hour signs went up again. City Manager Mark Scott said the new signs went up before notifications had gone out to the businesses in the area warning them of the change, which the city’s Traffic Commission approved at a meeting last month.

It’s a mix-up that’s frustrated Yacoubian and other business owners on the block. They say their businesses have been hurt by customers of nearby Romancing the Bean who spend long hours surfing the net on the cafe’s free Wi-Fi.

The 80-year-old immigrant has owned and operated Sous Shoe Repair at 3427 W. Magnolia Blvd. for nearly three decades and said he’s only recently heard from customers saying they circle the block looking for parking, then give up.

“We lose customers, we lose money,” he said.

The parking difficulties stem from a change to the city’s ordinances in 2010, about two years before Romancing the Bean opened its doors on Magnolia. The revision lets city officials more easily waive parking requirements for restaurants seeking to open in vacant retail or office spaces with less than 2,000 square feet of floor space.

The city code typically requires a restaurant to have 10 parking spaces for every 1,000 square feet of floor area. Supporters hoped cutting down on the time and cost of getting an exemption from the requirement would encourage more small eateries to open along Magnolia Boulevard and spur foot traffic in the area.

The only dissenting vote on the ordinance came from Councilman David Gordon, now mayor, who predicted conflicts would arise over the parking issue.

“I can just see it, down the road, where people say, ‘What were they thinking?’” Gordon said at the time.

Burbank Community Development Director Joy Forbes confirmed this week that Romancing the Bean had complied with the ordinance when seeking a permit to operate in its current location in 2012. Businesses and residents within 1,000 feet of the address were notified about the potential restaurant and only one local resident raised a concern at the time.

Romancing the Bean owner Kerry Krull said she doesn’t think it’s fair to blame her business for the parking issues.

“I’m not the only person who has customers,” Krull said. “There’s lots of things going on here.”

Krull has said her typical customer stays for about 45 minutes.

At the start of the lunch rush on Wednesday, just before noon, there were about three spaces open on the north side of the 3400 block of Magnolia Boulevard. About 18 customers were seated inside Romancing the Bean or at outdoor tables, and about half of them were using laptops or tablet computers.

An hour later, at 12:50 p.m., all the spaces were full and there were 23 customers at the cafe — six using computers. All but a handful of the original customers from before noon had left.

Across the street at Audrey K Boutique, Audrey DuBiel said she thinks Romancing the Bean is an asset to the block and brings new and repeat customers to the area. She said she is concerned the one-hour parking restriction will confuse customers who know the area as having “no hassle” parking.

“I’ve never had a customer in four years tell me they’ve had a problem parking,” DuBiel said.

There is off-street parking nearby — notably a 46-space lot on Lima Street south of Magnolia Boulevard that’s available for free public use six days a week. But some of the business owners say customers have to walk a block out of their way to get to the nearest crosswalk or they don’t even know the lot is there.

Those owners have asked the city to look at installing a signal to allow pedestrian crossing at that corner and to provide better signage for the public lot.

Public Works Director Bonnie Teaford said the city is looking at several options to improve the situation, including a possible proposal to add a signaled crosswalk. But she said there are budgetary concerns, with the cost of installing a signal running around $200,000 on the high end.

Teaford said businesses were being notified this week that the one-hour signs will go back up for a 60-day trial starting next week. Two-hour signs have already gone up on a nearby part of Lima Street, where parking had been unrestricted before, she said.

Parking enforcement has also picked up, said Charlotte Carpenter Lewis, owner of Miss Charlotte’s Vintage, but she said it’s too soon to tell if that’s had an impact.

One small change has had an effect, however.

Customers had hesitated to park in one spot in front of Carpenter Lewis’ shop, where a sign post and a faded curb made it unclear whether it was a legal space.

On the same day city workers were changing — and rechanging — the parking signs, they repainted the curb and moved the sign post. Now people are using the spot.

“It’s just one more space that we desparately needed,” Carpenter Lewis said.