Faced with a citizenry upset about downtown’s deepening parking shortages and businesses anxious about looming parking restrictions, Palo Alto officials struggled on Monday with the complex topic of new downtown garages.
After a discussion that involved more than 10 separate votes and stretched just past midnight, the council directed planners to further explore potential locations for downtown garages; solicit ideas for partnerships on new garages from the private sector; agreed to expand the pool of downtown drivers to whom the city can sell permits for the City Hall garage and to explore new technologies that would enable city officials to track garage usage in real time.
The meeting served as a prequel to the Feb. 24 discussion of a broad “transportation demand management” program, which would provide incentives for commuters to ditch their cars and switch to transit and other modes. But even as the council looks to manage demand, it is also considering supply-side solutions, including new garages and a satellite lot east of Embarcadero Road.
The new parking facilities were the two meatiest items in the long menu of reforms planning staff brought to the council Monday night. The discussion came two weeks after the council asked staff to create a “residential parking permit program” (RPPP) that would set time restrictions in parking spots for downtown commuters in congested residential areas, provided a supermajority of residents votes to institute such a program. Once the program is in place, workers long accustomed to having free all-day parking access in neighborhoods like Downtown North and Professorville will have to find new spots to park.
Where these spots will be was the lingering question at Monday’s meeting, which underscored once again that parking discussions in Palo Alto are rarely brief and never simple.
Even as council approved a slew of relatively non-controversial parking-supply initiatives (selling more permits to underused city-owned garages, better use of technology to track parking availability, allowing commuters around South of Forest Area to purchase parking permits for the City Hall garage), council members opted to tread carefully on the two most ambitious ideas — a proposed garage on the city-owned Gilman Street lot, near the downtown post office, and a much larger parking structure on Urban Lane, west of the Caltrain tracks. Instead of moving forward with more analysis on these particular proposals as staff had recommended, the council agreed that it needs more information about alternative sites.
The Urban Lane structure, which would accommodate up to 478 cars, proved particularly unpopular, with several council members describing its massing as out of scale with the neighborhood and Councilman Greg Scharff likening the rendering of the structure to a “blimp.”
Even the more modest proposal for the Gilman Street structure faced some opposition. Councilwoman Karen Holman and Councilman Pat Burt proved particularly skeptical about the data used by staff to choose Lot G, as this site is called, over five other potential sites.
Holman said she doesn’t believe the community “really wants a five-story parking garage above ground.” She went through a laundry list of other parking initiatives the council is pursuing — including Caltrain Go Passes for city workers and increased parking-permit sales for existing garages — and suggested that moving ahead on a garage now would be “premature.”
“We’re not going to fill our downtown, I hope, with five-story parking garages,” Holman said. “It would change the character of our town remarkably.”
Burt characterized staff’s choice of Lot G as arbitrary and requested more information, including a calculation of how many spaces the city should pursue, before making any decisions on this issue. The council ultimately requested by an 8-1 vote, with Mayor Nancy Shepherd dissenting, that staff return with three different alternatives for a new downtown garage. Burt also warned against doing too much at once.
“I’m open to doing one (garage) but the one should be done in a thoughtful, deliberative process, even if it’s an expedited thoughtful, deliberative process,” Burt said.
Burt also proved apprehensive about staff’s other garage proposal, on Urban Lane. In this case, he had plenty of company on the council.
The concept proposed by staff is to pursue a partnership with Stanford University, which owns the land, and Caltrain, which leases it from Stanford and uses it for commuter parking, to create a slew of improvements to the area around the transit center. City planners asked for the authority to pursue planning grants to explore this concept further.
That request ultimately fizzled after one member after another suggested that the proposed structure is too massive. Burt was particularly adamant about not pursuing the grants, likening this idea to the city’s recent stumble with 27 University Ave., an ambitious proposal by John Arrillaga to build four office towers and a theater. After expressing initial enthusiasm about the development and considering a special election on the Arrillaga “concept,” the council withstood a flurry of criticism from the community before backtracking and effectively killing the proposal.
Burt warned Monday that proceeding with the giant Urban Lane garage would similarly send the wrong message and prompt members of the community to ask about the council, “What were they thinking?”
“It’s like this council doesn’t learn from our errors,” Burt said.
Initially, council members considered allowing staff to apply for grants that would allow planning work. Chief Transportation Official Jaime Rodriguez said both the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority have funds available for projects of this nature. But after hearing from Burt and other members, City Manager James Keene reversed course and argued that this approval could actually cause more harm than good. Councilman Marc Berman stressed that if the council ultimately decides to pursue planning work in this area, it could do so later with local funds.
One idea that did move forward Monday, though not without disagreement, was staff’s proposal for a satellite lot on Embarcadero Road, where commuters would leave their cars before getting shuttled to their offices downtown. The move would require the reduction of lanes on Embarcadero from four to two and would create about 200 parking spaces along Embarcadero, east of Geng Road.
Holman panned the idea of adding parking so close to the Baylands and argued that this would be tantamount to “urbanization” in an area where parking traditionally hadn’t been allowed. She warned about a parking “creep” happening and called adding parking east of Embarcadero “a bad idea.”
“I don’t think transferring impacts from one location to another is where we want to be going,” Holman said.
Schmid agreed and joined her in voting against the proposal.
“The people who will benefit are commuters from outside who want to work downtown,” he said. “The people who will bear the cost will be the residents going to the Baylands — a changed and different experience.”
Their colleagues, however, had fewer reservations, particularly after staff explained that the approval only pays for environmental analysis and additional design work. Scharff stressed that it’s important to give downtown workers a place to park once the Residential Parking Permit Program is launched. And Klein, who worked at a law firm on Embarcadero for more than 25 years, vigorously disputed Holman’s characterization of the site. He argued that Embarcadero is currently “underutilized.”
“If there are better stop gaps, bring them forth,” Klein said. “I can’t think of one; staff hasn’t been able to think of one. If we aren’t going to let (commuters) park in neighborhoods, we’ve got to let them do it in some other place.
“This is the place to do it,” Klein added, before the council voted 7-2 to support the exploration of this idea, with Holman and Schmid dissenting.
By the same vote, the council approved having staff reach out to private developers for proposals on possible partnerships for downtown structures. While Schmid and Holman didn’t like the idea and voted against it, their colleagues agreed with Councilman Larry Klein, who called it an “innocuous idea.” Shepherd concurred.
“I believe we need to go ahead and solicit and find out if there is interest,” Shepherd said.
Thanks very much to Councilwoman Karen Holman and Councilman Pat Burt. As a resident in an older Category 2 historically significant building on Gilman Street, it would be quite tragic to build a massive parking structure on Lot G. That lot, of course, is surrounded by numerous and beautiful historic buildings (some from the 1920s era)and backs to the elegant old Post Office property. It is also surrounded by a rather dense, well designed, residential section of downtown. It is a very pleasant area to walk along the old Oaks; and, of course, the Farmer’s Market, is a joy, there. Thank you.
This is why there should be a moratorium on any project without sufficient parking.
Council will push this issue past the election, hoping the appearance of talk will remove it as an issue for those running for re-election.
After the election? they will revert to what they did before – approving variances & high density projects that don’t have enough parking
Why worry about permits. We need more flexible parking for people who want to park all day and pay per hour.
Parking is too complicated in Palo Alto.
A staff handout last night revealed key information on empty spaces in existing downtown garages, but surprisingly didn’t add it up. Simply doing so shows that the city found over 1,400 empty spaces in the downtown garages during its morning and midday surveys last November. That means about 60% of spaces in those garages weren’t being used.
It’s astonishing that the city staff didn’t report this. It utterly devastates their arguments that we need to build more garages. In fact, we already have more unused spaces than what we’d add by building all the new garages staff is studying.
The city also has a long waiting list of people wanting to buy permits to park in downtown garages. It won’t sell them permits and thus is losing money. Selling just 1,000 more permits would raise about half-a-million dollars a year and still leave space in the garages.
City staff’s incompetence is mind-boggling. They should stop spending money on fancy architectural drawings of new garages and focus on how to sell more permits and fill the garages we already have. That means we need technology for managing the spaces and a residential permit program to ensure commuters don’t park for free in neighborhoods instead.
The policies which this City has recklessly pursued for many years have
destroyed the qualities of this City as new projects continue to come through the pipeline. At this point it is not just the destruction of a
beautiful and unique City, what we have lost. This is a City which at ground level appears to have no land use planning, no effective zoning control, no design review, no aesthetic values. This is the antithesis of everything people expected not only from this City but any local government. That is where we are. Thankfully last night Burt and Holman, and Schmid tried to save the City from further destruction by talking about values, process, further impacts.
Apart from this overview, I would point out that Klein last night said the traffic bottleneck at Embarcadero and Bayshore was a north-south issue when the satelite parking lot came up. But when traffic exits 101, the cars trying to make a left turn at the traffic light have to merge left, and cut off through traffic on Embarcadero heading east in a recurring hazardous situation especially at peak times. And as a first step the City needs to manage the existing garages to provide some immediate relief to the neighborhoods.
I am concerned about the Embarcadero parking east of 101. There are other projects discussed / approved for this general location, including:
1. The flood control on the creek which will wrap around the ball park and golf course;
2. The golf course upgrade to remove trees and re-position holes;
3. Inclusion of soccer fields in this location;
4. Lack of decision on waste/sewage plant which may require many trucks;
5. Desire to upgrade baylands, upgrade conservation center;
6. Possible new hotel at Mings;
7. Possible airport upgrade.
8. Homeless shelter?
What else is being proposed for this limited space location? There are numerous projects on the books but possible blind-siding on what they all are.
Problems with parking in this area:
1. Security problems on auto theft;
2. night lighting for security;
3. requirement for buses to move people – this is an additional cost not discussed in decision.
PA needs to resolve problems on the inner city parking discussed last night first and then let the Planning Department lay out all of the projects that are being discussed in the Embarcadero area.
In previous requests for comments many people wanted to see this area revitalized with the hotel and more restaurants.
It’s no surprise that the Council voted as it did regarding a potential satellite lot on Embarcadero b/c there aren’t any residential groups (aka voters) to object. But the devil will be in the details. Klein is correct that exisiting lots are underutilized, but the road is not and when he was working @ 1717 Embarcadero there were fewer businesses in the area.
Stanford recently fully populated the Tech Center (fka the Harbor) and now there are 2 shuttle services (the Marguerite and the Embarcadero Shuttle) servicing the area. There are also at least 4 major projects in the pipeline: Ming’s hotel, the golf course reconfiguration, the S.F. Creek Project, and the Baylands Athletics Center. Also, the International School uses the Baylands lot for student drop off and pick up. If the plan includes re-striping Embarcadero so that it is 2 lanes instead of 4 the City will have a new set of problems – and these could involve 101. As is, it is not unusual to be stuck on the ramp when traveling from Oregon Expy to Embarcadero. This will likely worsen under the City’s plan and the impact could well extend to both 101 and Oregon. This is my commute and I see the problem every day. When I take the shuttle my commute time doubles (I don’t mind that but it is a fact that shuttle users should know about) but even the shuttle gets snagged in traffic at Geng/Emb. The exisiting level of use by pedestrians + bicyclists + cars + shuttles + delivery trucks + construction vehicles + emergency vehicles already tests capacity. And this is exacerbated when repair work is underway and lane closures are necessary. I suggest Staff engage in some outreach to businesses in this area so that future reports are reality based.
Free commuter parking in the residential areas is the problem here. It should not take a rocket scientist to figure this one out. What would you do, pay an expensive parking permit in a city garage or park for FREE! Duh.
Where is Buchanan? Time to break out the tin cans again. CC keeps kicking solutions down the road while approving more unparked projects every week.
There may well be unused parking spots in garages, but nobody knows where they are.
How can a visitor to Palo Alto find a space. There are no electronic signs saying whether a garage is full or has spaces. There are no signs saying where pay per hour parking can be found. People arrive and use their gps to find their destination then they look for the nearest available garage or lot. If they can’t find a space, they leave town.
There is no need to build more garages if they are going to be as complicated to use as the present system.
Get rid of the color codes. Get some electronic signs showing where the parking is available. Get some apps for smart phones. Get meters on the streets. Make it simpler to pay to park all day or for 4 hours. Get real.
Get real.
I agree with issues raised by Annette. In addition, here are some other problems with using the Baylands Athletic Center parking lot for satellite parking.
The Baylands Athletic Center and its parking lot are dedicated parkland which means they may only be used for park purposes and that means PARK, not downtown satellite PARKING. The City would have to hold a vote to allow satellite parking on this parkland site.
Several years ago the City approved a pedestrian path to allow children from the International School to be picked up after school at that parking lot. A sea of parked cars would create a safety hazard.
Relatively recently the Council approved a plan to incorporate 9 acres more of playing fields on land currently part of the golf course adjacent to the Athletic Center. It assumed the existing parking would be used for those fields. Where are field users supposed to park when those playing fields and our current playing fields are in use?
The intersection of East Bayshore and Embarcadero has been operating at Level of Service F (highly congested) for years. As noted, new uses in the area will add to that congestion. The Geng Road intersection is scarcely a block from that intersection and already appears to be similarly congested.
This satellite parking proposal will only create a false sense of adequate parking when, in fact, it will allow Council to continue to approve office buildings with high all-day parking demand and just add to the already severe parking problem downtown.
Where are all these empty spaces? Please help me find them when I need them. I find it increasingly frustrating trying to find a place to park when I take my family downtown for dinner on a Thursday, Friday, or Weekend night. Lunch time during the day is equally frustrating. Often after driving around for 15 to 20 minutes I end up multiple blocks away in a residential area. As a result, I am looking at other areas to go where it is easier to park.
Annette, Emily and other posters. There is also the stanford Eye Laser center there,just across from Ming’s sort of nestled between West Bayshore and 101
So let me understand. We can’t have parking East of 101 because it might cause some congestion at an intersection.
Well, we have congestion at lots of intersections all over Palo Alto that probably can’t handle it. We have lines of cars waiting to pick up students outside all schools in Palo Alto. We have a temporary library in a park/rec center and school parking (at Cubberley), but we can’t use an empty parking lot at the athletic fields to ease parking congestion in downtown.
Now this just takes the biscuit.
I get the impression that some people just don’t want to think outside the box.
Whether the staff is incompetent or not, I think they do their boss’s bidding:
1) Look for solutions that increase the work and staff for the planning dept. Hire consultants and architects and managers. Look for grants to administer.
And
2) Make sure any suggestion makes money for a developer, Chop Keenan if possible.
@Resident – contrary to the conclusions you seem to have drawn, my point is that the proposed solution needs to be carefully executed b/c there are previously existing conditions (and apparently some commitments) that are not going to magically evaporate so that the plan works like a charm. What’s the point of relocating a problem? Eventually the original problem will resurface if the solution is fraught with delays and other problems. Congestion is pretty much a given everywhere; danger shouldn’t be.
Also, if you do have a good out-of-the-box idea, please propose it; I think you will find that good ideas will be applauded.
I went over to Geng Road today to check out what this was about. The majority of Geng Road is private property for the businesses there. The only available parking is at the baseball park. Major excavation is underway on the golf course in this area for the soccer fields. So if you put in the soccer fields in this area how much more excavation is underway for this parking lot? It is all on golf course land. I am getting the feeling that they are already excavating for the parking lot now and put this in the CC meeting as a after thought to record it.
If anyone participates in the moonlight runs they know that there is a major flood control ditch that surrounds the properties in this direct area including the airport flight line. They also should know that the golf course is a flood control area that has a lot of flooding issues.
The PA Weekly should be providing a map of the intended projects in this area so everyone can see how this will turn out.
Mings better get on their horse and get the hotel built – he who hesitates will not be in the game.
It is simple to reduce the demand for parking. Charge all new office/business construction a 100% fee doubling the cost of building new space. Does Palo Alto need more jobs? People complain about affordable housing – freeze new demand by freezing the development of additional commercial/industrial buildings.
If you have a policy of subsidizing new jobs by giving the developers free parking you will have parking problems, traffic problems, and no affordable housing except that paid for by taxes.
I can’t believe a plan to turn every road in Palo Alto into a two lane road while dramatically increasing commercial space and activity makes sense to anyone.
Annette
Thanks for the support about good ideas.
I have many ideas and have mentioned them quite a bit, but common sense ideas are ignored.
We need to get rid of the color coded nonsense in garages. It is too confusing to those who do not park regularly.
We need to have pay per hour machines in every city lot and garage.
We need meters on the streets.
We need to have electronic signs around town showing where there is available parking, in which garages, and smart phone apps to enable visitors to find the elusive garage with some vacant spaces.
We need to efficiently enable people with permits to share their permits between cars.
We need to be able to utilize parking lots that are only used at certain times to be available for other uses. In other words, some churches, etc. have large lots which are used weekends and evenings with only small numbers of cars parked on weekdays business hours. There should be some way that these lots could be utilized by others during these times.
Parking for Caltrain is $5 per day, I can’t see that parking in nearby city lots could ethically be charging more per day as people are using Caltrain lots to park while working in Palo Alto. This practice must be discouraged.
These are common sense ideas but the CC do not seem to want to hear common sense out of the box ideas.
Resident – I think some of those ideas are great and encourage you to print out that list and send it to City Council and Jessica Sullivan. The idea of using church lots could be a win-win-win. Church gets money, City gets use of parking spaces that already exist, and drivers have a place to park.
Jeff – I appreciate your last comment tremendously; why that approach has so much appeal to City Staff and Council beats me.
I had to laugh with fury, when Chop Keenan had the nerve to stand up at the city council meeting and say he thought the Urban Lane garage proposal (the fortress) was a great idea. Of course he liked the idea of a monster garage. It would be parking for all the commercial buildings the city council allows him to build, that don’t have parking on site. I also cringe when city council members reference him in their comments, as though he is some God like person. Palo Alto’s city manager, Keene, needs to be fired. Who hired the incompetent consultant who stood up at last weeks city council meeting and couldn’t explain the reasoning for his chart? Palo Alto has intelligent citizens, but the people working at city hall are a disgrace. Last weeks city council meeting was a total embarrassment. We need a clean sweep at city hall.
How about providing free rides on VTA for any passengers tagging on in Palo Alto? I know that there is a lot of resistance by car owners in the bay area to riding the bus, but the busses are actually pretty clean and quite timely. A good amount of people commuting to downtown Palo Alto live within a 5-10 minute walk of a 22 bus stop, so it seems like a great idea to try and convince these people to use the bus.
@frustrated The Bryant Street garage between University Ave and Lytton is the place to go. Drive all the way up to the top floor and you’ll find a spot. I’ve been up there at 8pm on a Friday night and there were only a handful of cars parked there. The floor below was only half full too.
I have two questions – 1) why would putting a satellite parking lot on the other side of 101 require reducing Embarcadero to 2 lanes? 2) Urban Lane is next to two hotels and PAMF – where is the “neighborhood” that a parking structure would be incompatible with if it was built there?
Use of church parking lots is a problem. The church is paying insurance for the property and building. If the lot is used during the week for a purpose other than the church business then that changes the insurance liability for the property. Also the risk of having a commercial business running on the property. It also changes the tax liability for the church – it changes up the purpose of it being there.
The 49er stadium ran into the same problem – using local businesses to park their cars – and tailgating with trash left behind? Someone then has to clean-up the trash and monitor bad behavior on the property. If you have many unidentified people on your property then you have major security problems that church’s typically are not prepared to handle.
@Resident 1 – I figured there’d be insurance issues but also hope that the problem is suffciently vexing to Mr. Keene et al that some creative thinking will be directed at that issue. Perhaps Keene and his crew could “get religion” and park in a church lot, freeing up some spaces at City Hall. Where there’s a will . . .
@palo alto resident – re your 1st question: one of the ideas mentioned for east of Embarcadero is re-striping the street between Geng and the golf course and adding 200 parking slots on the north side. This would require a lane reduction, and that was referred to as a “thorny” issue by the author of the news article. That person is a master of understatement.
How can that monster parking garage be built on Urban Lane, considering the future expansion of the rail corridor to 4 tracks?
Parking in church parking lots – talk to the city lawyer. You cannot have a bunch of unknown people appearing whenever on your property. Especially if they have been out drinking. There is not sufficient security and you are making the church suck up the liability for anything that goes wrong. Also it is an open invitation for people to break in to the cars – or the church. That is just wrong. Please do not invest any time in this tangent.
Embarcadero road – you have businesses there that are entitled to any emergency services required – fire, ambulance. You have an airport – – you have soccer kids – you have a car dealership – you have all kinds of business activity and you are trying to turn this into a parking lot. Given the stream of people telling you that the downtown parking should be managed differently is what you should focus on.
You have parking garages that are not being used – solve that problem – do not create different problems.
Talk to the legal staff – this is a can of worms – people arriving and leaving at all hours, possible drunk from some event in the city. What if someone is robbed? there is nothing out there to support this activity. You are now expecting that the police force will have to devote time to checking this all out all of the time.
Anyone building a parking garage today has a new set of compliance issues to deal with. This is a very expensive operation regarding safety, ability to withstand earthquakes, etc. Many insurance issues, tax issues building specification issues.
I am sure that the city has already encountered what these requirements are.
That is all the more reason to devote whatever funds you have to making the existing garages as efficient as possible.
As to building new garages I am sure that the current group of contractors and building developers are thinking of ways to avoid this thorny problem.
Building parking structures is not a easy task in todays world of compliance issues, insurance issues, etc.
Where did the staff recommendation come from to build a garage on Gilman
behind the post office? Burt said he could not follow the logic supporting
this recommendation in the staff report and the consultant couldn’t explain it either. This is the site of the Farmer’s Market. It is in the midst of
an attractive eclectic mixed residential area with historic buildings including the post office itself. The Farmer’s Market embodies everything we get in the endless but meaningless rhetoric from the City about walkable,livable neighborhoods, environmental consciousness,sustainability, all the rest. Holman questioned the staff recommendation also and it wasn’t rubberstamped as proposed by the staff. This time, another train wreck was
averted at least temporarily.
I think the Gilman idea comes from a C. Keenan proposal from several years ago. Swapping properties etc.
@Crescent Park Dad
Lots of questions surrounding the staff recommendation regarding the
Gilman street site. Give credit to Burt and Holman.
I have no opinion on Gilman as I haven’t studied it at all. But someone asked where or how did Gilman even become a possible garage target/site…hence my reply and reference to C. Keenan’s earlier proposal a few years ago.
Parking garages work, and they normally are built where the parking is needed. Great idea!
> “We’re not going to fill our downtown, I hope, with five-story parking garages,” Holman said. “It would change the character of our town remarkably.”
The character of our town is that there is no parking and parking structures work well … although if I had to criticize Palo Alto’s parking structures I’d say they are not really friendly to the people in them – but they do work and they are convenient.
The idea of having people parking in the Baylands and bussing them to downtown is very bad. First, if they need to park in the Baylands, they will be hostages, and will end up being charged and paying through the nose. Then, it will add development, traffic to the Baylands and detract from the scenery.
It will also create more traffic back and forth to downtown. Just a terrible idea all around.
Just another nail in the coffin of the Baylands … the noisy airport, the stinky sewage treatment plant … and the city can just apply itself towards assaulting our remaining sense … very bad idea.
A big parking garage could go right beside the Aquarius theater which is already a parking lot, and it’s almost always full … that would be the perfect use of that space, and it’s so large it would not have to be that high, and maybe they could take it down a few levels too.
I am glad that Stanford has figured out how to address its parking problems so well. Let remember that Stanford is a private organization that assumes all legal responsibility for what transpires on campus and a full legal staff to make sure the business plan is addressed correctly.
They know how to take care of business. They have the means to put their ideas into full operational mode very successfully.
What is successful there is not an indication as to the same business restrictions as a city – which is a government agency – of sorts. PA is a city with government restrictions and responsibilities which are different.
I can see some people on the PA CC with a “good Idea Bubble” over their head but no idea as to the logistics, government requirements, and tax implications of those ideas.
City Government is a creative process only up to a certain level – when you go to put it in place is when the real problems surface and cost more than you budgeted. It is problem of who is responsible – who is assuming the liability when something goes wrong – usually something that you never dreamed of.
In my opinion, there is a need for parking garages in our downtown. We should be having parking garages having big Commercial door openers. The council should also increase the frequency of public transportation. To read about Commercial door openers click on this link. http://www.grifco.com.au/products/poultry