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Squeeze of Success : Parking Shortage Threatens San Pedro’s Downtown Revival

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Times Staff Writer

When San Pedro residents gathered recently to mark the end of their 100th anniversary celebration, Joe Marino, the centennial committee chairman, produced an item to be buried in a time capsule: a city parking meter.

“We’d like to bury all of them,” Marino declared, drawing more than a few chuckles from the crowd.

But Marino’s gesture was no joke. Parking is a sensitive topic in downtown San Pedro, where merchants and a growing crop of restaurateurs are complaining that there is not enough of it.

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“It’s without a doubt our biggest problem,” said Nick D’Ambrosi, owner of Norman’s, a men’s clothing store on 6th Street. “At 9:30, before we’re even open, there’s not a place to park on this street.”

Closed for Lunch

John Papadakis, owner of Papadakis’ Taverna, said he keeps his restaurant closed for lunch because there is no place for patrons to park. At night, he rents the San Pedro Municipal Court lot across the street. “Sometimes,” he said, “these poor people have to go around the block three or four times to pay for parking.”

In a sense, downtown San Pedro is a victim of its own success: As revitalization efforts take hold and new businesses and restaurants flourish, more shoppers and diners are flocking to the area--and filling up the parking spots.

The problem is particularly severe on 6th Street between Pacific Avenue and Centre Street, where the revitalization has been most effective and the only parking lot--the courthouse lot--is reserved for people on courthouse business.

The nonprofit San Pedro Revitalization Corp., asked by the city to look into the problem and make recommendations, has not come up with any answers.

The problem is not money; the city has set aside more than $1.5 million to provide additional parking in San Pedro. The problem is that the revitalization corporation, made up of downtown merchants, cannot agree on where to put it. Sixth Street merchants want parking on their block, and 7th Street business owners want it on theirs.

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This week, frustrated city officials decided to take matters into their own hands. Rather than wait for the revitalization board to make a decision, city officials will purchase property for parking on their own, said Ann D’Amato, aide to Los Angeles Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores.

“We’re basically going to acquire the properties because we feel we can do it much quicker,” D’Amato said. “The bottom line is we want to provide parking that is good for the entire business district, not just one block or the other. . . . They (merchants) all agree that we need more parking. . . . The only issue is where the parking is going to be located, and then it gets into ‘what’s closest to my business.’ ”

Rick Gaydos, chairman of the revitalization corporation’s committee on parking, said he is disappointed with the city’s decision but does not disagree with it.

‘Unwilling to Move’

“I think the council office got a little frustrated,” he said, “that even when money was available . . . the board was unwilling as a group to move in the same direction and aggressively pursue additional parking.”

The city’s move comes just a week after the revitalization board voted to pay $900,000 for four lots on Nelson Street, between 5th and 6th streets, the current site of Modern Insurance and an automobile repair shop. Gaydos said the vote was split, 8-4, and discussion was divisive.

Although the proposed purchase pleased 6th Street merchants, the issue quickly became moot when the owner of the property, Curtis Higgins, announced that he did not want to sell.

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Like other downtown property owners, Higgins said, he knows that his land will continue to appreciate. “It’s perfect for an office building, not a parking lot,” he said.

Given Higgins’ refusal, Gaydos said the board intended to make a similar offer for property on 7th Street that is owned by Local 56 of the Shipscalers Union. A union spokesman said he had not received any offer, and it is unclear whether the city will pursue the union property.

Some time ago, the board considered another solution to the parking problem on 6th Street: double-decking the courthouse parking lot. One prominent 6th Street merchant, Warren Gunter, calls any other solution “ludicrous.”

But the county, which owns the court property, said it will not help pay for construction of a parking structure. And Gaydos said revitalization officials decided that such a project would take too long and cost too much.

While authorities search for a way out of the parking crunch, merchants are becoming increasingly concerned that lack of parking will hurt the downtown renaissance.

Downtown stores already face stiff competition from South Bay malls and strip shopping centers on nearby Western Avenue, where parking is convenient, and business owners fear shoppers will begin to spurn downtown for those areas.

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Customers Complain

D’Ambrosi, who also owns a store on Western Avenue, said he has tried to encourage customers to frequent his downtown shop but said they complain about parking problems.

Downtown parking has been an issue in San Pedro at least since March, 1987, when a study on parking was released by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation.

The study, prepared by a consulting firm, found that the downtown San Pedro area actually has an overall parking surplus but that certain blocks have “a real parking deficiency, forcing parkers to park some distance from their destinations.”

The study found such deficiencies in four of the seven blocks that front on 6th Street and in one block fronting on 8th Street. The study predicted an overall 70% increase in demand for parking by 1995.

Gaydos, however, said the problem is even worse than the consultants projected because the study based its figures on normal commercial growth and did not take into account the restaurant boom downtown. “The study very quickly became very dated,” he said.

Some of the study’s recommendations--the quick and easy ones--have already been implemented.

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Meters Converted

For example, all the on-street meters downtown have been converted to accept a quarter for two hours of parking. Previously, some meters had allowed only 30 or 60 minutes.

In addition, split-rate meters--those that accept a quarter for one hour of parking and 75 cents for a full day--have been installed in three municipal lots in an attempt to encourage business owners and their employees to park there and not on the street.

Most business people agree that these minor changes in the way parking lots and meters are administered have been an improvement. But some say business owners and employees are still parking on the street, and a handful maintain that there should be no meters at all.

This was tried briefly--and unsuccessfully--at Christmastime, when the city covered all the downtown San Pedro meters in an effort to draw shoppers.

Emergency Meeting

The experiment was universally declared a disaster; employees and business owners apparently took all the parking. Within a week, the revitalization board held an emergency meeting and asked the city Department of Transportation to uncover the meters.

Now, yet another effort to alter the meters is afoot. Jackie DiIorio, owner of DiIorio’s Restaurant on 7th Street, is calling for the time limit on meters to be extended to four hours so that her patrons can take lengthy business lunches.

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“I think we’ve done a very good job of bringing a good clientele to this area, and there’s nothing that will chase them away faster than getting a $13 parking ticket with their lunch,” said DiIorio, who has been in business in the 400 block of 7th Street for a year. “It just gives them the feeling that they’re not welcome to spend their money in San Pedro.”

Another common complaint among merchants is that people in San Pedro--like others in the car culture of Southern California--don’t want to walk from their cars to a store.

Even Los Angeles Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores--a staunch advocate of downtown redevelopment and an avid walker--said there are times when she postpones shopping downtown because she can’t find a parking place nearby.

Gaydos said he hopes people will be more inclined to walk from shop to shop on downtown streets as the revitalization improves and so-called “marginal businesses”--bars, bail bond businesses and thrift shops, among others--are replaced by more fashionable stores.

But in the meantime, he said, “people are used to parking right next to the business where they want to visit. We have parking on the outskirts of the area. But people are unwilling to walk two blocks. They’ll do it at a mall. But they won’t do it in our downtown.”

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