by Rufus Jeffris
Bob Loveland has two words to describe what he thinks about parking in downtown Palo Alto: "It's miserable." Loveland is a cashier at Mac's Smoke Shop on Emerson Street, where most customers simply want to dart in, grab their magazine, newspaper or tobacco and dart out.
That formula doesn't include circling the block for 20 minutes searching for an open parking space.
On more than one occasion, Mac's customers have said they have given up trying to find a spot and gone elsewhere for their reading material.
Finding a practical solution, however, isn't easy.
There's little disagreement among downtown Palo Alto business owners that parking--or the dearth of it--can figure prominently in their bottom line. But opinions seem to vary on what measures would ensure that everyone gets a slot when they need one.
Over the past year, the Chamber of Commerce and the city have fashioned a plan they think will ease the problem and make parking more plentiful for customers.
Under the one-year trial plan, four color-coded parking regions within the downtown core have been designated in the area defined by Lytton and Forest avenues and Alma and Webster streets. Cars may park on the street for no more than two hours in each zone between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.
The plan is intended to discourage downtown employees from "sleeper parking," the practice of continually reparking in two-hour spaces throughout the day to avoid a ticket or having to pay for permit parking.
The parking plan will be launched Friday with a kick-off event at City Hall Plaza, complete with a "Blockhead" game in the four zone colors: purple, blue, lime and coral.
Parking problems don't cause Pauline Swain much bother. She's owned Swain's House of Music at the corner of University Avenue and Cowper Street since about 1952.
"I can't say we have any real problems with customer parking," Swain said.
Sure, there's more traffic now than 40 years ago, Swain says, but a nearby public lot on Lytton Avenue and Kipling Street gives her customers two hours of free parking.
Swain only wishes that more downtown workers would use the reserved permit parking spaces the city's set aside for them in its lots. She says she frequently sees those spaces empty.
The issue of parking for downtown employees is a sore subject for many business owners, who are convinced that workers hog parking intended for cash-toting consumers.
But Loveland is not persuaded that the pastel plan will do any good. He says employees are already hatching schemes to get around it, such as shuffling cars between the street and spots in city lots reserved for businesses.
And telling employees to buy $200 annual permits to park in reserved spots isn't fair and doesn't make sense for the majority of downtown workers who he says earn only minimum wage.
"It's a stab at the problem," Mary Fasching said about the color-coded parking. Fasching opened Whales and Tales, a wildlife store and gallery on University Avenue near Cowper Street, almost six years ago.
After hearing customers tell her that they'll drive by her store unless there's a parking place in front, she's willing to give the color-coded remedy a try.
But Loveland says Swain and other business owners in that area will be changing their tune about parking when, and if, plans to transform the vacant Varsity Theatre into a large discount bookstore and cafe proceed.
He says they'll have the same parking congestion that's hit Mac's since the Ross Dress For Less clothing store moved in last year just down the block.
Times certainly were more peaceful before Ross arrived, said Valeria Bell, who's operated Bell's Book Store on Emerson for 56 years. She blames the City Council for not insisting that the giant chain store provide more parking than the two small existing public lots.
An influx of small restaurants in the past several years, Bell said, also has generated more traffic downtown and exacerbated parking problems.
"The city has been doing some ameliorating things but not enough," she said.
Bell said she's doing more business over the phone and through the mail with customers who don't want to drive downtown and risk getting a $20 ticket. And many business owners, she said, have been forced to extend their hours to make up for the customers they lose, a move Bell is now reluctantly contemplating.
"We've done (that) one day, and I think we're going to have to do more," she said.
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