HUNTINGTON BEACH : Parking Shortage Concerns Council

The City Council has put together a rough draft of changes for its downtown master plan, but many on the council are still unhappy about a parking shortage.

“We are at least 200 spaces short,” Councilman David Sullivan said. “And we’re not designating additional space for parking; it’s just an amorphous situation. If we take any more teeth out (of downtown parking regulations), we’re left with just dentures.”

Sullivan and other council members expressed their concern about downtown parking spaces after the council on Wednesday night took a series of straw votes on proposed changes to the downtown master plan. The changes approved by the straw votes will be incorporated into a city ordinance before the council takes a formal vote on the issue in early June.

Most of the proposed changes are technical matters, such as allowable alley widths and building-setback requirements.

But the changes will not take care of the expected higher demand for parking downtown, according to Sullivan and several other council members. They worried aloud that as more downtown blocks are redeveloped, the parking problem will continue to worsen.

City Administrator Michael T. Uberuaga, however, told the council that downtown’s parking situation is not as bad as they may think. “Part of the problem is not parking supply, but how we manage it,” Uberuaga said.

Uberuaga said that the city-owned downtown parking structure is rarely filled to capacity. He said that the structure was filled during the downtown art fair last month, the first time it had been full since last summer’s Pierfest celebration.

Some downtown property owners nevertheless contend that parking is becoming a critical problem. One of them, Bob Mandic, told the council that businesses soon will be affected unless the city finds more space for downtown parking.

“It’s not just a parking problem,” Mandic warned. “It’s going to be a marketing problem in the future.”