Does the Wet Suit You

Build the Parking, Make Tourists Pay

The idea that putting a little bit more parking downtown can fix a massive regional traffic and parking problem makes about as much sense as putting lipstick on a pig. Silly on its face. So let’s not pretend we can or should.

As soon as all those folks in the sun baked interior hear about more parking in Laguna, they’ll be hitching up their chariots and racing right on over. As things are now, we’ve got, “I don’t want to go to Laguna. There’s no place to park,” working for us. Imagine how many more tourists would come here if they thought they had a good chance of finding parking.

Be that as it may, we are short of parking in the downtown area. It used to be the locals didn’t go downtown in the summer because of the tourist mess. Today, it’s all year-round that you’ve got to time your visit. It’s only quiet early in the morning. Any later than that, you could be circling like a vulture.

We have treasured facilities downtown, that can accommodate lots of people, that have no parking at all. The New Lynn Theater, now called the South Coast Theater, is one. The Festival of Arts is another. Big and small, they’re all over town. They were built long before there were any parking requirements. Where do all those folks park? In front of your house?

We’ve got parking credits available for saving old buildings. This can enable an intensification of the building’s use, attracting even more tourists. But there are still no new places to park. Only more parking credits on paper. Then there’s the potential impact on parking, if we decrease the parking requirements for our distressed downtown business community.

Maybe it’s reasonable to think that a few new real parking places should be thrown into this blizzard of paper ones. Don’t forget that big parking deficit from places like the theater. What would parking be like if it reopened? Our theater should become a world class music venue like the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles or the Lighthouse Cafe in Hermosa Beach.

Let’s build a parking structure somewhere near downtown. A place to park a few hundred cars. It can’t be ugly or massive or detract in any way. It can’t gum up the traffic pattern where it’s located. It must be perfect.

And it can’t cost the residents a penny, not one red cent. Make the tourists pay for it. That way we won’t care when it usually sits empty.

J.J. Gasparotti moved to Laguna Beach with his family when he was 11 years old. He has loved it ever since.