NORTHRIDGE : Residential Parking Near CSUN Banned

Temporary parking privileges after the Northridge earthquake have been rescinded along two stretches of city streets near the Cal State Northridge campus because of safety concerns and complaints from some residents about rude student behavior, university officials said Friday.

Parking is no longer available on the north side of Superior Street between Lindley and Nestle avenues and on Halsted Street between Lindley and Etiwanda avenues, according to CSUN Police Lt. Michael Sugar.

The university last week asked the city of Los Angeles to suspend parking along Superior after a number of homeowners complained that some students had hemmed in their driveways, littered the streets or trampled their lawns. In one instance, a student’s car blocked the exit of a gated circular driveway designed for a van specially equipped to carry disabled children, Sugar said.

“It created enough of a disturbance in that particular neighborhood that we felt that the appropriate measure would be to remove the parking privilege,” Sugar said.

On Halsted, officials abolished parking out of safety concerns because of buses traveling along the side of the road and the lack of sidewalks for students parking their cars.

After the Northridge temblor, the city eased parking restrictions on 25 streets around CSUN, which lost 2,500 spaces with the spectacular collapse of a campus parking structure. Sugar said the city had agreed to waive the restrictions until the end of May.

Over the past few months, the university has worked to restore the 9,200 parking spaces it had before the quake, securing about 7,600 by Feb. 14, when the campus finally reopened for the spring semester.

Next week, CSUN hopes to pave a lot on the northern end of campus to create 2,500 more spaces, pushing the total higher than what existed before, university spokesman Bruce Erickson said.