Ocean Blvd. Parking Spots Washed Out : Coast Panel Endorses Park for P.B. Waterfront

The California Coastal Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to replace one of the last stretches of oceanfront parking in San Diego with a grassy park, walkway and bicycle path.

The commission approved a city proposal to extend for three blocks an existing park that is just north of Crystal Pier. The vote was made over the objections of some Pacific Beach residents, who said replacing the lost parking with spaces on nearby streets could not replace their enjoyment of one of the last sites where they can view the beach--and almost step right onto it--from their cars.

“People who go to the beach come to go to the beach, not to go to a park,” said Carol Vandegrift, who said public transportation doesn’t help beach-bound families. “I’ve never found a way to carry a boogie board and a blanket and a cooler from bus to bus.”

But commission members said the parking problem was outweighed by the benefits of the project, which they expect will revitalize an area that has been a popular site for drinking and cruising.

“If you’re carrying boogie boards and picnic baskets, what the heck,” commission member George Shipp III said at a public hearing at the Shelter Island Marina Inn. “If you can’t walk two blocks, you probably shouldn’t be in the water.”

The commission voted down a recommendation by its staff that the city add three parking spaces on side streets in the area for every one removed by the project, to relieve congested traffic and make up for the 43 beachfront spaces and about seven other spaces that will be lost when the park is built.

San Diego Councilman Mike Gotch, who has spearheaded the project, told the commission that it would be impossible to recover 150 spaces by marking the surrounding streets for diagonal parking. The commission voted that the city should replace the lost spaces with an equal amount of new spaces within three blocks of the beach.

The $1.5-million project extends a park built last winter as part of a 1982 master plan for Ocean Boulevard, which formerly ran three blocks on either side of Crystal Pier. The southern portion will have ramps for handicapped people and emergency vehicles, a seawall, grass and palm trees. Nevertheless, 18 oceanfront parking spaces on the southernmost block of the project, between Grand and Thomas avenues, will be retained.

“Instead of a crummy, crime-ridden parking lot we’ll have a pedestrian greenbelt,” said Keith Behner of the Pacific Beach Community Planning Committee.

Residents speaking against the project ran the gamut from an elderly man who was moved to tears during his speech to a man who said his motorcycle would be stolen if he couldn’t park it in plain sight at the beach.

One woman, pointing out that the commission had spent more than half an hour debating the loss of one parking space, said the commissioners should be more concerned about losing the oceanfront spaces. Some residents said that, by opening the beachfront to development, the city was closing it to the people who use it the most.

“I go there on my lunch hour to pick up some of that ionized air, a sandwich, watch the ocean and watch the girls, (and) it’s a big break,” Joseph Janulewicz, the motorcyclist, told the commission. “If we were having this meeting at the beach I think you’d vote for keeping the parking spaces.”

But to George Foelshow, a resident without a car, the parking issue was one-sided.

“I just don’t go along with this car culture,” he said. “There’s only one Pacific Ocean. We all have to make the best use of it.”

One block of the park will be built over the winter, city officials said, and work on the final two blocks will be scheduled as funds become available.