STUDIO CITY : Owners Accept City’s Offer on Parking Site

A 30-year struggle to establish a public parking lot in Studio City has taken a large leap forward.

The owners of a 1.25-acre lot at 12229 Ventura Blvd. have accepted the city’s offer to buy their property for $1.9 million. The sale will clear the way, city officials hope, for a November opening of the lot, which would contain 80 to 90 metered spaces.

The lot is behind a Household Bank and contains an actors’ studio, which will have to be demolished.

Karen Patterson, a manager in the Los Angeles Transportation Department, said that before the deal can be concluded, the city must make sure that the tenant’s lease will expire in a workable amount of time, because the city cannot afford to relocate the tenant.

Spearheading the community’s long-lived quest for parking were Art Ginsburg, owner of Art’s Deli; Ben Rinaldo, a member of the Studio City Residents Assn.; Tony Lucente, president of the residents group, and Sondra Frohlich, executive director of the Studio City Chamber of Commerce.

“At long last we’ve seen the results of a very long struggle for some parking relief in Studio City,” Lucente said. “And while this isn’t the final step, it’s a big one in the right direction.”

Lack of parking has been a critical problem in the community since the early 1960s, according to Ginsburg, who has run his restaurant for 37 years.

“I think it’s fantastic,” Ginsburg said. “I think this will be a good thing for both the residents and the merchants. I’m glad the city is finally doing something to help us.”

Money to buy the land came from a discretionary parking fund of the Fifth Council District, Zev Yaroslavsky’s district before he became a county supervisor.

Yaroslavsky worked to protect the fund, which came from local parking meters, from being raided by the City Council for uses outside the community. Although the City Council has approved funding to buy the land, funding for the construction costs--estimated by Patterson at $500,000 to $750,000--still needs council approval.

According to Patterson, the parking meters would be two- or four-hour meters and charge 25 cents per hour. That means that, while shoppers would find it easier to find parking, businesses would still face the problem of providing parking for their employees.

The next task for his residents group, Lucente said, is to lobby the city to build a multilevel parking garage on the site. If such a structure is built, Patterson said, longer-term parking for business employees might be possible.