Council to Go Over Management Terms for Parking Garage

City officials could move another step closer to building a badly needed downtown parking garage Monday when they consider an agreement outlining the construction and management terms for the proposed structure.

The City Council already has approved a plan and earmarked money for the structure to be built near the northeast corner of California and Santa Clara streets. A design has not been chosen.

Monday’s agreement, if approved, will fulfill the terms of a contract signed in July with the developer of a 10-screen theater in the city’s downtown district.

City officials have promised to provide adequate parking for the planned downtown multiplex cinema. The agreement would guarantee that the site will be used for public parking for the theater and will establish a validation parking system for moviegoers.

Downtown merchants say that without ample parking they cannot compete with malls and their acres of parking lots. Shop owners have been seeking better parking for years. But most also want the structure to fit the architecture of downtown.

“Customers complain if they have to walk more than 30 paces,” said Ed Elrod, co-owner of the Ventura Bookstore, who has worked on parking task forces and advisory boards for years. “But I’m pretty sensitive to what it looks like. I don’t want it to look like a shoe box, with air flow between the floors.”

Shop owners are also concerned about how long construction will take. They said last year’s street beautification project nearly put them under.

They await the new parking structure with a mixture of joy and dread. They hope that at long last their parking problems will be solved. But they fear that once again customers will have to brave the inconvenience of downtown construction.

“I am very concerned about reduced on-street parking,” said Cliff Linder, who sells Oriental rugs on Main Street and says his sales dropped substantially when the sidewalks were torn up and on-street parking disappeared for a short time last year.

Planners say the structure will have 525 parking places and will be four stories tall.

The farmers’ market that currently uses the lot on Saturday mornings will shift to a different, undetermined downtown location.

Kathy Wertzel, operations manager for the farmers’ market, says she has been working closely with city planners since January to find a new location for the market so customers won’t have to lug bags of oranges and lemons hundreds of yards to their cars.

City planner Pat Richardson says the final design for the parking garage should be selected by mid-autumn, and construction could begin as early as March. It will be designed by International Parking Design and will take six to nine months to complete.