If you were in the Downtown neighborhood on any weekday morning, you could not miss the usual sights:
Parents driving their children to school. On Van Buren Place, you usually see 10 or more cars illegally double-parked. With parking at a premium just for the people who live on Van Buren, school parents are on their own. Parents get their children out with traffic driving by.
Abandoning their double-parked cars in the street, parents walk their children into school.
Over on Irving Place, parents are also trying to find premium parking. After quickly filling up the entire available street parking, parents use the old 63-vehicle Culver City parking lot at 4043 Irving Pl. I say “old” because the city sold the lot for $3.1 million and no longer owns the lot.
The developer, in a very smart move, has not secured his property. He has not fenced in or even just simply chained off the entrances on Irving Place or Lafayette. Doing so would show the obvious impact that losing the public parking lot would cause to the neighborhood and Downtown.
Theoretic traffic studies do not address “real life” parking issues.
The city calls the current condition “transient parking.” Doing so, they don't have to study or count the number of vehicles that use the lot on a daily basis. Doing so, they don't have to find out who are the people parking on the lot.
Not knowing who are parking on the lot and where they are walking to is ignoring the elephant in the room.
On Sept. 2, in another neighborhood, School Board member Scott Zeidman’s fourth grader, son Jason, was struck by a car, on Farragut Drive as he crossed the street for school at 7:40 a.m.
He suffered a concussion, a broken left fibula and left tibia, a blackened right eye, and he required stitches.
Jason is expected to be in his leg cast for six weeks. The incident triggered a batch of emails to city and School District officials, calling for stronger safety measures to be implemented and enforced. This is like closing the barn door after the horse has been stolen.
I see a potential barn door standing wide open.
The developer of 4043 Irving Pl. wants to change Irving Place near his project from a one-way street to a two-way street so that condo buyers and businesses can get to his project easier. The street was made one-way years ago to protect the children of Linwood E. Howe Elementary School. There are so many vehicles around school in the morning and in the afternoon there is no place to park.
According to one publication, School Board member Scott Zeidman said,
“It would be nice if all of us could get together and find a way to make things safer. As part of my job as a member of the School Board, I will be looking into ways for dealing with the city. I would like to see if we could work on the traffic flow, lower the speed limit, do something to make conditions even safer.”
By the late morning, the Downtown workers have claimed their free parking spaces in the lot.
The City of Culver City offers Downtown employees a month of parking in one of their parking structures for $60 per month, $110 for tandem parking spots.
But why pay for something you can get for free?
According to an article in the Sunday, Sept. 7 Los Angeles Times, “Spaces reserved for businesses in city garages were part of the package city officials used to lure new retailers during the last decade,” [Mayor Scott] Malsin said, “but now the area may be popular enough to eliminate the perk.”
Let me get this straight… when the 4043 lot is developed with 26 condos and three offices, where will the employees go to park after the city “eliminates the perk”?
They will park for free in the neighborhood. Don't think they will? They are now. At least two employees parked illegally in the heart of Downtown for at least six months.
They parked at two parking meters without putting money in the parking meter.
How could they have done that? you may ask?
How could they have parked for eight hours for free? They used a very simple household item to trick the meter into thinking they had put two hours of money in the meter.
But isn't there a two-hour limit on parking meters in Downtown Culver City? Yes, there is. But it is not enforced.
As long as they tricked the meter every two hours, they parked for free.
As long as the meter is not flashing the “expired” signal, the city thinks they are getting money. They don't worry about parking turnover. They care about the money.
After being caught on video, the fraudulent meter cheaters just started parking in the neighborhood south of Downtown. With no parking restrictions one block into the neighborhood, they can legally park all day for free, and they do.
In the evening, the parking dynamics change again.
The evening employees and patrons take over the 4043 Irving Pl. lot and neighborhood streets.
Several times I have seen the 63 space lot full. The night ends with people wandering or some staggering into the neighborhood when the new Downtown bars close at 2a.m., trying to find their cars.
Many have been illegally parked on Irving Place after midnight but never ticketed. The record amount I have seen is 16 illegally parked cars within a block and zero tickets even though signs clearly say no parking 12 a.m. to 8 a.m.
According to an article in the Sunday, Sept. 7 Los Angeles Times, “By dinner time on most nights in downtown Culver City, a steady flow of traffic fills the city's three public parking garages and scores of metered spaces, spilling out into residential streets…
“But there's a price to be paid for this commercial revival: more congestion, cranky locals and frustrated consumers who can't quite understand what's happened to the once-quiet town."
"Cranky locals"…. yes, that is me. I admit it. It makes me cranky when I read, “City officials, business owners and locals say the valet service may not completely solve the parking crunch, but it adds a high-class touch to their downtown.”
People parking in our neighborhood add a low-class touch to our neighborhood.
Downtown business owners say they are pleased with the valet service.
“When people drive all the way to Culver City, we want to give a nice welcome,” one restaurant owner was quoted as saying.
Well, you can quote me as saying, "Your cars are not welcomed… in our neighborhood." Culver City selling off parking to developers only creates more traffic and less public parking.
There are about 1,500 spaces in the city's three parking garages, in addition to metered parking spaces on the streets of Downtown. All spaces are filled up.
The city either built inadequate parking structures to meet parking requirements or they built adequate parking structures then approved too much business to come into Downtown.
The standard quote from various city officials is, “We are the victim of our own success.” The only victims I see are the citizens of the Downtown neighborhood. We are the victims of Culver City's failure to look out for anything other than business interests.
City officials have applied for a Caltrans grant to install “smart parking” signs at all three city garages by 2010.
How does that keep people out of the neighborhood that are looking for and finding free parking?
“Culver City is commissioning a study this year of how parking is being used and managed downtown, at a cost of $50,000 to $90,000,” Malsin said.
“The study will help officials decide whether to expand the valet service, re-allocate parking within existing garages or build more,” he said.
The city has not spent one dime to address the steady flow of traffic parking in our neighborhood. In fact, in selling off the 4043 Irving Pl. parking lot, they have insured that more vehicles will park for free in our neighborhood.
I will tell them that when the City Council will hear an appeal of the massive one block deep (from Irving to Lafayette), 26 condo/three office development of 4043 Irving Pl. on Monday at 7 o’clock in City Council Chambers.
I fully expect at least one of the Council members to ignore the elephant in the room and only see development dollars.
