So Many Employees’ Cars, So Few Parking Spaces

When the U.S. Postal Service opened its Valley Village post office in 1966, parking was not an issue.

There was a moderate-sized lot behind the Magnolia Boulevard storefront and plenty of room on nearby streets to handle any overflow.

Now that lot is needed just for customers and delivery trucks. So the facility’s 48 employees have to search out spots on nearby residential and commercial streets.

An old story maybe, but one that’s stirring up not a few new parking feuds.

The roughly 150 post offices in Los Angeles and nearby suburbs employ 14,000 people -- but half the facilities don’t have parking, said Postal Service spokeswoman Terri Bouffiou. Those who drive to work are left to rent spots in nearby lots or fend off angry neighbors as they seek refuge for their cars during the workday.

Frank Sheftel, a chocolatier who dabbles in politics and owns The Candy Factory on Magnolia a block from the Valley Village post office, is so put out by one letter carrier’s habit of parking in front of the little strip of stores that includes his business that he’s started a petition drive to limit the parking on Magnolia to two hours at a time.

The situation has become so tense that postal supervisors have begun walking the letter carrier to her car at night. “She’s afraid of you,” a manager told Sheftel last week, according to the candy maker.

“We try to be sensitive to the neighborhood so we don’t get embroiled in this kind of conflict,” Bouffiou said. “But a lot of these facilities are very old, and parking was not a concern when they were built.” The letter carrier did not respond to a written request to be interviewed.

It’s not only postal employees, of course, who park on public streets. Neighbors around The Grove, a massive new shopping center in the Fairfax District, complain that employees park on First Street and other nearby streets, rather than in the complex’s parking garage.

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Employees Must Pay

Karen Diehl, spokeswoman for developer Rick Caruso, said two floors of the complex’s 35,000-space parking garage are reserved for employees, enough room to accommodate 1,042 cars. But, she said, workers are charged $70 per month to park there, and some avoid the lot for that reason. On a typical day, the lot serves only 650 employees, Diehl said, just over half of its planned capacity.

“There’s a steady stream of people in uniforms preferring to use public streets instead of the facilities at The Grove,” said Steve Korbin, a lawyer who lives on Edinburgh Avenue and serves on the Mid-City Wilshire Neighborhood Council.

If Sheftel’s drive to restrict parking on Magnolia Drive in Valley Village is successful, this quiet, tree-lined street will become one of 46,000 places in Los Angeles where parking is restricted to one or more hours at a time -- most at the request of merchants or residents who complained that people were parking for too long in front of their homes and businesses.

It’s just up the road from the spot on Lankershim Boulevard where city employees dug holes to plant L.A.’s first parking meters in 1949, meant to enforce such hourly limitations on parking with fees and fines.

The time-limit restrictions are different from preferential parking zones, which limit or forbid parking by anyone who does not display a permit issued by the city. Permit zones are easier to get: Merchants or residents on both sides of the street sign a petition available from City Council offices or the Los Angeles Department of Transportation.

“All we need is a petition from the retail district,” said John Fisher, assistant director of the transportation department. “If the businesses want it, then we’ll be happy to accommodate them.”

The city does send a traffic engineer to assess the situation, but unlike permit parking, time-limit parking does not require an action of the City Council, and is much less controversial. And, unlike permit parking, there’s no annual fee.

The only catch is that, because there are no permits exempting local residents from the rules, no one can park on the street for more than an hour or two. Homeowners must park in their driveways or risk parking tickets.

But for a commercial district, the restrictions allow a certain flow of customers while forcing longer-term parkers to go somewhere else.

For its part, the Postal Service has negotiated some leases with parking garages near facilities that don’t have lots. A new, $8-million post office on San Fernando Road in Glendale has two floors of underground parking for employees, Bouffiou said.

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Fending for Themselves

Employees of the Valley Village post office, however, must fend for themselves. Pushed out of residential streets by new restrictions, some continue to leave their cars on those parts of Magnolia Boulevard where parking is unlimited.

In the Happy Hooker craft shop a couple of storefronts from Sheftel’s place, Teresa Merino is embroiled in an intense conversation about knitting when the door flies open and about 10 customers, one after the other, suddenly flood the small store.

Merino supports the parking restrictions, saying limits will make it easier for customers to park in front of the store. There is a parking lot out back, but that’s inconvenient for some people, who like to park right on Magnolia.

They often can’t do that, she said, because of those who park in front of the shop for hours.

“It’s hard if you want to park in front of the store,” said Doris Borenstein, who stopped in recently for some yarn and who supports the proposed change.

Ultimately, though, Borenstein said, the culprits are not those who need parking -- whether for their jobs or because their apartment buildings lack sufficient space, or even because they are lingering over a long lunch at Marv’s Deli next door.

“There are too many cars,” Borenstein said, more than planners ever envisioned when this and other parts of town were built. “And that we can’t do anything about.”

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If you have a question, gripe or story idea about driving in Southern California, write to Behind the Wheel c/o Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or send an e-mail to behindthewheel@latimes.com.