Rating Southland Parking Lots

You can hardly go anywhere in Orange County without taking your car along--which means that however much an ordeal it may be to drive from one place to another, getting there is only half the headache. Once you arrive, you still have to find a place to park. And that can be no small task, especially this time of year.

That’s why Rick Clark, manager of the Laguna Hills office of Barasch Architects, thinks it’s about time we started paying more attention to the places we park, from multilevel mazes to vast expanses of asphalt to those little postage stamp-size lots that always seem to be overrun with bulky Buicks.

Clark, who has designed more than 100 parking complexes in Orange County and elsewhere, has taken it upon himself to rate some of the county’s best and worst parking lots and garages. He looked at the parking facilities at shopping centers, entertainment complexes, office and industrial parks and mixed-use areas, judging each lot on such factors as safety, circulation, efficiency and appearance. It should be pointed out that one of the complexes rated (Tustin Ranch Market) was designed by a company Clark was once associated with and a second (Pacific Park) was designed by his current employers.

He doesn’t claim to have put together a comprehensive list; that would take months, if not years. But he does offer some examples of what works and what doesn’t when it comes to parking.

OK, trumpets ready? Or for this fanfare, how about car horns? Whatever. Let’s open the envelope. The winner is: South Coast Plaza’s Crystal Court. (Beep! Honk! Beep! Beep! Hooray!)

“It’s almost a pleasure just to go in,” Clark says. “It’s so easy to get in and out, it’s lit well, the lobbies are brought down to you” in the complex’s lower level. Clark enjoys parking at Crystal Court so much, in fact, that he sometimes parks there and rides the shuttle when he goes to South Coast Plaza’s main complex. But the ultimate compliment is that he has borrowed many of its design aspects for a complex he is developing in Glendale.

Crystal Court marketing director Julie Stewart says the place does get lots of compliments from customers. But Stewart says there is a handful of people who don’t like it all that much: “Our parking valets. It’s so convenient to park that people don’t use them much.”

Meanwhile, at what Clark calls “the other end of the rainbow,” there is the lot at Knott’s Berry Farm, his least favorite.

“If you’ve ever gone there with kids and a stroller, you know it’s just a nightmare. There’s the gravel lot, and you have to walk under the street through a dark tunnel,” Clark says. “And everything’s just been added on and added on without a plan.”

Crystal Court earned 19 out of a possible 20 points on Clark’s rating scale, while Knott’s Berry Farm garnered only 8.

He awarded points on a scale of 1 to 5 (poor, below average, average, good and excellent) for each of the following criteria:

Safety: “Is it designed to discourage prowlers and criminals? Is there sufficient turning room and other conveniences so that cars can avoid accidents? Can pedestrians move safely, away from car lanes?”

Circulation: “Are there adequate entrances and exits, to avoid bottlenecks? Can pedestrians get to their destination without long walks?”

Efficiencies: “Are there sufficient parking spaces for the number of people using the adjacent building? Does the parking lot make productive use of the space it has been allotted? Does it try to ‘shoehorn’ as many parking stalls as physically possible, thus creating a crowded look?”

Appearance: “Is there sufficient landscaping and other design devices to ‘soften’ the presence of the parking facility? Has the structure been designed so that it blends in with, or complements, the surroundings it serves?”

On that scale, Crystal Court rates a 5/4/5/5, while Knott’s Berry Farm gets 2s all across.

In points alone, the lots at the Orange County Performing Arts Center and Irvine Spectrum business park tied Crystal Court with 19 points each. But of the three, Clark admitted Crystal Court had the edge, for less tangible reasons than those on his chart.

Especially in Orange County, architects must pay progressively more attention to parking these days, Clark says. “It’s a very car-sensitive marketplace,” he says. “Every place we design in Orange County has to include some place to park.”

And that means more than just setting aside a small rectangle next to the building for blacktop and stripes.

For one thing, city planning codes now include long lists of specifications for parking lots. “They’ve gotten it down now to where they require a certain number of trees for a certain number of cars, like 1 to 4 in some places. There are areas--not in Orange County, but other parts of the state--where it’s required that 50% of your parking lot be in shade on a certain day in August at high noon.”

Then you have to be careful about ingress and egress (entrances and exits, for those of use who don’t speak planner-ese). Where? How many? And how big do the spaces themselves have to be? How many compact spaces are permitted? How close together can you put those little landscaped islands and still leave room for a fire truck to turn around?

And in highly planned areas, such as Irvine, the master plan dictates not only acceptable colors but what kinds of plants are included in the permissible “landscape palette.”

Besides which, Clark says, “It has to look good too. Developers are very aware that it can’t just be an ocean of asphalt next to their front door. It has to be inviting.”

And different, given the limitations of all those regulations, because parking lots make a statement about the buildings or complexes they accompany. “The parking lot is sort of a transition area from the outside world,” he says. “It’s the first place you go.”

But however lovely the landscaping, however striking the statement, a parking lot still isn’t doing its job if you can’t slip into a space, get out of the car and come back without exhausting yourself.

The average parking space, by the way, is about 9 by 19 feet, Clark says, or 8 by 16 feet for a compact space. But each local government sets its own standards, so that’s just a general rule of thumb.

Diagonally slanted parking spaces aren’t as trendy as they once were, partly because “you need a bigger lot for that to be efficient,” Clark says. The biggest advantage to slanted stalls is that the drive aisle between them can be one-way, and therefore half as wide. But for most purposes, perpendicular is most popular these days.

Also on the way out, Clark says, are those cement wheel stops--you know, the ones you can’t see that keep you from driving forward out of a stall instead of backing out. They’ve been replaced by landscaped islands.

In the future, Clark says, parking in Orange County can grow in two directions: up and down. But not sideways. “Lots of parking here typically is surface parking,” he says. “But it’s all related to land cost. There’s a point at which it makes more sense to build a structure. That’s happening more and more in Orange County.”

PARKING LOT RATINGS Parking lots were rated on a 1-to-5 scale in four areas: Safety, Circulation, Efficiencies and Appearance. 1 is poor, 2 below average, 3 average, 4 good, 5 excellent. A total of 20 is the best possible score. SHOPPING CENTERS Among the best: Crystal Court (5/4/5/5) 19 Tustin Ranch Market (4/5/4/5) 18 Fashion Island (4/4/4/4) 16 (Sorry, no extra points for the ocean view) Deficient: The City, Orange (3/3/3/3) 12 (“It’s spread out just enough that you have to get in your car to go from one area to another, and it’s not very easy to move around.”) ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS COMPLEXES Among the best: OCPAC (4/5/5/5) 19 Disneyland (4/5/4/5) 18 Anaheim Stadium (4/4/4/4) 16 Deficient: Knott’s Berry Farm (2/2/2/2) 8 Anaheim Convention Center (3/3/3/3) 12 (“If you’ve ever waited downstairs to get out with 50 other people, all those cars idling, you know what a raging headache you can get just from the gas fumes.”) OFFICE AND INDUSTRIAL PARKS Among the best: Irvine Spectrum (4/5/5/5) 19 Pacific Park, Aliso Viejo (4/4/5/5) 18 Deficient: Airport Industrial Park, Costa Mesa (2/2/2/3) 9 (“This was one of the first industrial parks done in Orange County, and we’ve learned a lot since then. It has no continuity, hardly any landscaping, much more of a rambling effect.”) MIXED USE (Office, hotel, restaurant) Among the best: Koll Center Irvine (4/3/4/5) 16 Newport Center (4/3/4/4) 15 (Again, no points for the view) Deficient: Westin South Coast Plaza (2/2/3/2) 9 (“It’s way back behind the tennis courts. For a woman at night, it would not be desirable to go to the car alone.”) One Pacific Plaza, Huntington Beach (3/2/3/3) 11 (“It’s a very urban complex in a suburban market. It’s very dense, and the circulation is overtaxed for the number of cars.”) The Road to Romance

Sure, you’ve heard of life in the fast lane, but how about love in the fast lane? How many of you indulge in a little freeway flirting now and then? And how many of you have actually dated that attractive stranger one lane over? Is cruising for love a craze whose time has come?

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