Merchants Fight Conversion of Parking Lot

All it took Monday to keep motorists out of the public parking lot in Beverly Hills was a “full” sign and a blockade of plastic barrier posts when the last car managed to squeeze inside.

Keeping bulldozer operators out of the busy parking lot between between Canon and Beverly drives may not be so easy, however, merchants from the heart of the Beverly Hills business district are discovering.

Shop owners are taking the unusual step of hauling Beverly Hills officials into court today in an effort to block a $37-million redevelopment project at the city-owned lot in the 400 block of North Beverly Drive.

The city wants to construct a 87,000-square-foot commercial building atop the lot and a four-level parking garage beneath it.

City leaders claim the subterranean parking structure will increase the number of public parking spaces at the site by about 40%.

Merchants claim the project will decrease the number of spaces available to the public by about 40%.

The merchants’ contentions are spelled out in a lawsuit scheduled for trial today in Los Angeles Superior Court. The suit challenges the legality of the Beverly Hills City Council’s approval of the project last July 11 on grounds the city failed to require an environmental impact report.

The environment aside, the project’s predicted 18-month construction period could ruin some nearby businesses, according to merchants. They worry that customers won’t shop if there’s no convenient parking between the time the existing lot closes and the underground structure opens.

“This whole thing has been rushed through,” said David Mendelson, co-owner of the Nate ‘n Al delicatessen, a popular North Beverly Drive fixture. “My customers, an older generation, don’t want to park underground anyway. And they certainly don’t want to wait that long for it to be built.”

City officials have reportedly contracted with the Crate & Barrel home furnishings chain to rent about half of the space in the new building and are looking for other retail and office tenants.

Beverly Hills Mayor Mark Egerman said the project will benefit both shoppers and merchants. He suggested that the merchants’ parking space math is faulty.

Egerman said a city tally shows that the current lot accommodates 122 cars. About 140 can be squeezed in if parking lot attendants line them up tandem-style, he said.

Even if the required spaces reserved for employees and customers are subtracted, the proposed underground garage would provide 169 public parking spots, compared with the current above-ground lot’s 122 spaces, Egerman said. If valet-run tandem parking was used in the proposed structure as many as 541 cars could fit there, he said.

“This is not rocket science. Our staff can count the number of cars,” the mayor said.

Beverly Drive cheese shop owner Norbert Wabnig said the city’s space math is fuzzy. “Do the real math. What you see is the community loses public parking,” he said.

Fran Berger, owner of The Farm restaurant, which overlooks the parking lot, said merchants are prepared to appeal if they lose in Superior Court. Shopkeepers have kicked in more than $25,000 for the legal fight so far, she said.

“A City Council member looked me in the eye and said, ‘Fran, we know what’s best for the city.’ The city says we’ve wasted our money, that we don’t know what we’re talking about,” Berger said. “But we do.”