Parking problems move south

Barbara Diamond

Aliso Shopping Center tenants and Montage Resort have taken steps to

resolve parking problems in the area since the hotel and Treasure

Island park opened.

Starting Thursday, cars parked for more than two hours at the

Aliso Creek Shopping Center will be towed. The new policy is in

response to the use of the center’s parking lot by people going to

the beach and park. Montage has submitted a request to the city for

temporary use of two vacant parcels across the highway from the

resort for additional parking to ensure its employees will not park

at the center or on neighborhood streets.

Albertson’s Market manager Nick Zaccarino estimates that 75% of

the people illegally parked in the center are going straight to the

beach.

“They don’t want to pay the meters,” Zaccarino said. The ones

going to Montage don’t want to pay for valet parking, and I don’t

blame them -- it’s $10.”

In addition to towing, the center will also hire an attendant to

monitor parking provided for shoppers. Center employees have started

parking under the market and behind shops to free up spaces in the

lot for the shoppers, but not for people going to the beach or and

park.

“We are very concerned about what will happen when summer comes,”

Zaccarino said. “South Laguna will be like North Laguna.”

Many neighbors blame the resort for the parking problems at the

shopping center, but Planning Commissioner Norm Grossman said that’s

not fair. The resort, he said, has provided the parking that was

required.

“Montage is taking the rap for the city,” Grossman said. “The

resort doesn’t have to park the park. [The city has] to park the

park.”

The effect of the park and beach access was not fully taken into

account in the parking management plan done for the resort, Grossman

said. Based on parking problems at Heisler Park and the burden it

puts on North Laguna residents, the city should have known Treasure

Island Park would need more spaces than the 70 provided on the

property, he said.

“That is our fault,” Grossman said. “It is the fault of the

Planning Commission, and I hold myself responsible, the fault of the

Design Review Board, the fault of the City Council and the fault of

the California Coastal Commission.

“I for one am not surprised at how popular the park is,” Planning

Commissioner Anne Johnson said.

“But we don’t know exactly what’s going on down there. Everything

[the commission gets] is anecdotal. None of us have ever had a

problem parking at the center.”

Required parking for the resort was determined in the

environmental report on the project.

“The requirements were established by a licensed traffic

consultant and approved in a peer review by a different consultant,”

Grossman said. “What else could we do?

“We cannot legally require more spaces than the parking management

plan determines are necessary. There has to be a nexus.”

In other words, the city cannot not demand 700 parking spaces

simply because it wants more parking. However, if a second resort

parking management study scheduled for this summer shows a need for

more parking, Montage will be required to purchase space off-site or

reduce uses, Grossman said. The study will not include park and beach

parking.

There is still a question of employee parking.

Athens Group, the resort developer, has applied for a temporary

use permit for the two parcels between Ruby’s Diner and the shopping

center across the highway. One is the old Unocal gas station site,

and the other was most recently used as a headquarters for Athens

Group.

“There are 140 spaces there,” hotel spokeswoman Marguerite Clark

said. “We do not anticipate more than 250 employees on our site at

any one time, and they don’t all drive their own cars. We also

recently implemented a bus subsidy program to encourage employees to

use public transportation.”

Where will the employees park when the use permit expires?

That’s one of the questions the Planning Commission wants answered

before it makes a decision on the hotel’s request for the temporary

permit for two years, 24 hours a day.

In the meantime, a retail project, submitted by Kenneth J. Cummins

for the property, was put on hold. Cummings said it wasn’t fair that

he had to pay for Montage’s problems.

“Well, he’s right,” Johnson said. “It looked to me as if the city

was proceeding without objective data.”

Decisions should not be based on guesswork and misinformation,

Grossman said. He expects staff to have answers to commission

questions when the hearing is resumed on the Athens Group application

for the temporary use permit.

The next hearing is scheduled for May 28.