IRVINE : Street Parking Added Near UCI

Street parking will now be allowed near UC Irvine to help solve a parking shortage in two of the private apartment complexes across from campus.

About 100 parking spaces along one side of Stanford between Bridge Road and Cornell Drive should be ready for use by Monday.

The new spaces are primarily for residents of Dartmouth and Berkeley courts, apartment complexes owned by the Irvine Co. where on-site parking has been extremely limited.

“It’s been a real headache for the residents there, to come home and have no place to park,” said Michelle Lauron, director of external affairs for the Associated Students of UCI. For the past year, the student government has lobbied the city and the Irvine Co. to allow street parking as one solution to the problem. In December, the city agreed to allow parking on Stanford, which the Irvine Co. owns.

The shortage developed because apartments were originally designed for families, with parking space for one or two cars per family. Instead, students live in most of the apartments and commonly double up in bedrooms to save money.

“We built the property within the (city) code at the time. However, when you have four students in an apartment, and they all have their own cars, that skews the norms,” said John Maciha, an Irvine Co. vice president.

There were few alternatives for apartment residents who can’t find spaces on site. Parking on nearby streets was prohibited, and UCI would not sell the residents parking permits that would allow overnight parking on the campus, Lauron said.

“They really had no options, no place to go,” Lauron said.

The university now has agreed to sell campus permits that allow overnight parking at UCI to residents of private apartments near UCI.

“It’s not going to have a whole lot of impact, but it seemed like that was the least we could do to help the situation,” said Michael Delo, director of parking and transportation at UCI.

Lauron said that with street parking and the change in the campus permit policy, about 300 to 400 spaces will be available.

“That’ll relieve a lot of tension,” Lauron said. “We don’t need to find any more streets for parking now.”