Studio City : Developer Told to Improve Parking Plan

A city zoning board delayed formal action on Tuesday regarding the traffic headaches in the Laurel Promenade’s parking lot, but it did send a clear message to the shopping center’s developer: Something has got to be done.

The Board of Zoning Appeals instructed the developer, Ira Smedra, to present a better parking plan for his shopping center in two months. According to Tom Henry, planning deputy for City Councilman Joel Wachs, the appeals board told Smedra the plan should include valet parking on its surface lot in the plan, and to work with Wachs, city agencies and neighbors in creating the plan.

Currently, the Laurel Promenade, at Ventura and Laurel Canyon boulevards, has valet parking on its subterranean parking level and regular parking on its surface lot.

“The board recognized that there is a parking problem with the current layout [of the parking lot], and it needs to be changed,” Henry said.

Smedra had applied for a city liquor permit so that three restaurants at the mini-mall could continue to serve liquor on their patios, but a city zoning official ruled in December that he could do so only if he put in diagonal parking and additional landscaping at the site.

Smedra appealed the associate zoning administrator’s conditions, saying that diagonal parking would cost him 34 parking spaces. Neighbors have maintained that Smedra has failed to keep long-standing promises to improve traffic flow in the parking lot.