It’s a Dark Summer for Beach Parking Lots : Weather: Gray skies have discouraged beach-goers and cut lot operators’ revenue by as much as 40%.

Parking revenue from Westside beach lots has gone down the tubes this summer.

The dreary weather caused Santa Monica beach-lot revenue to plummet 40% in July, usually the year’s biggest beach-going month. Revenues from county parking lots--at places such as Venice, Dockweiler and Zuma beaches--are down about 25% this season, officials said.

“It’s a disaster,” said Robert Hindle, vice president of Parking Concepts, whose company operates county lots from San Pedro to Malibu--10,200 spaces in all.

Hindle said his blue mood is set each morning when he looks at the satellite weather map in the newspaper and sees clouds that “look like cotton candy over the ocean.”

Ed Simmons, president of Executive Parking, the concessionaire that operates Santa Monica’s 5,000-space beach lots, is also as gloomy as the skies above. Simmons said the Santa Monica lots had 63,000 patrons this July. In previous years, any July with fewer than 100,000 customers was considered a poor one.

Simmons’ company recently commissioned a weather study that reached the obvious conclusion that, yes, it has not been a sunny summer on the coast. But there was a second, related problem: Inland temperatures have also been cooler, too cool to drive residents there to the beach for a few hours of nature’s air-conditioning.

“It’s got to be hot in the inner city to drive people to the beach,” Simmons said.

At this point, most of the loss in parking-lot revenue will be borne by the parking companies that contract with Santa Monica, other beach cities and Los Angeles County. The contracts require the concessionaires to pay a guaranteed minimum whether the lots are empty or full.

In Santa Monica, for example, the city is guaranteed $2.3 million this year. The county contract calls for a $3-million-a-year guarantee.

Both Santa Monica and the county will, however, miss out on their share of the bonus income of a boom year. The contracts call for the city and county to receive a percentage of the revenue from attendance over a certain number.

Last year, for example, the county netted $500,000 over its guaranteed minimum, and Santa Monica received a $50,000 bonus.

The parking revenues pay for upkeep of the beaches, including lifeguards, but county and Santa Monica officials say they don’t count on the bonus revenue when making up their budgets.

The situation this summer is so bad, however, that the concessionaires are pleading for relief.

“You really can’t prepare for something that happens once in a hundred years,” Hindle said.

Chris Klinger, deputy director of the county Department of Beaches and Harbors, said he is sympathetic to his suffering parking contractor and has not ruled out contract renegotiation if the bad weather persists.

“They are really feeling the pinch,” said Klinger, “and are barely able to make their minimum payment.”

Santa Monica officials, however, are standing firm despite Simmons’ tales of woe.

“We’re not in the mood to renegotiate,” said Barbara Moran, director of Santa Monica’s Department of Cultural and Recreation Services. Moran said her staff is working to schedule special events at the beach to help boost Simmons’ flagging fortunes.

All involved hope for a late-August heat wave that would draw big crowds to the beach for the waning days of summer.

Although weather is widely thought to be the chief wet blanket for beach-lot revenues, the growing price tag for a parking spot near the sand may also be a factor. Lot fees in Santa Monica rose this year to $7 on weekends and $6 during the week.

In the county-run lots, the price was supposed to be $7 this year. But the poor weather and resistance to the high rate caused Hindle to offer some discount rates at off-peak hours. For example, beach-goers who arrive at county lots before 9 a.m. pay only $3.

“We argued against (the price increase) vehemently,” Hindle said. “We knew it would have a negative impact on patronage, and it did.”

Simmons, the Santa Monica concessionaire, said he did a survey of “turnarounds”--customers who pull into a lot but don’t stay--and found people saying they would be willing to pay $7 on a sunny beach day but not on an overcast one.

Hindle said he has found customers far more willing to pay $7 during prime weekend hours than during the week.

Both note that parking-lot business is better close to the piers, where people can walk, eat and shop, than in areas where sitting on the beach is the chief attraction.

Even if a late burst of hot, sunny weather materializes, it may not translate into crowds parking at the beach this year. Los Angeles Unified School District students, major beach fans, are already back in class because of the new year-round calendar. And vacation days for other families with school-age children are also dwindling to a precious few.

Beach parking concessionaires are not the only ones hurt by the cool, cloudy weather. Klinger of the county Department of Beaches and Harbors said restaurants, skate-rental facilities and other oceanfront entrepreneurs are also feeling the crunch.

“Granted, it’s been a terrible summer,” Klinger said.