by Mark McDermott
Any given Manhattan Beach City Council agenda will have several items that few souls in the city, outside of city government and a handful of residents and business owners, give an iota of attention to, but most will be impacted by.
Parking issues are Exhibit A of this phenomena. The City of Manhattan Beach’s recently completed parking study, and council’s deliberations upon it at last week’s meeting, is far below the public radar but of direct import for anyone who lives or works locally.
The city’s last comprehensive parking study was completed in 2008. Previous studies were done in 1984, 1990 and 1998 — roughly every eight to 10 years. This time the gap stretched to 18 years, in part because of COVID delays.
A lot has changed.
The $250,000 study, conducted by Walker Consultants and managed by City Traffic Engineer Erik Zandvliet, collected parking data in the summer and fall of 2024 and for the first time included the North Manhattan Beach commercial district, alongside downtown. It found a parking system under pressure not just in summer, but year-round.
At peak on a Saturday in July 2024, downtown parking hit 96 percent occupancy and North Manhattan Beach hit 98 percent — effectively full, with the only remaining open spaces being ADA, loading or otherwise restricted. Downtown had as few as 67 available spaces out of roughly 1,600; the North End had as few as eight out of 459.
“Anything over 85% is considered full…during the summertime, beach parking overloads into all of these areas, including the residential sections,” Zandvliet told the council.
But the more significant finding was what happened in the off-season. Fall 2024 parking demand was comparable to summer 2008 demand — the last time anyone studied the system. Peak demand hours have stretched from 1 to 5 p.m. in 2008 to 1 to 7 p.m. today. Downtown’s year-round commercial parking need, not just its summer beach overflow, now drives the problem.
Meanwhile, the system that manages all of this has not kept pace. Enforcement still relies on manual tire chalking. More than half of metered downtown spaces had vehicles parked beyond the two-hour limit. The $53 fine for common violations is, according to the study, too low to deter noncompliance. Merchant/employee parking permit utilization has increased 137 percent since 2008.
Zandvliet noted one bright spot: the city actually has more downtown parking spaces now than before the Lot 3 parking structure was demolished. Staff scrambled to add 58 on-street spaces, built a 70-space interim surface lot and added 26 spaces at the recently acquired US Bank property at 400 Manhattan Beach Boulevard.
“Totaling all that up, we actually have more parking spaces now than we’ve ever had in downtown,” Zandvliet said.
But Councilmember Amy Howorth pressed the point — more spaces doesn’t mean the problem is solved.
“So now there’s empty parking spots? Or are those spaces utilized?” she asked.
“I think it’s unequal as far as how it’s being used,” Zandvliet said. “There are some underutilized lots that are farther away from downtown. There’s still the need for merchant parking, and that hasn’t been addressed.”
Remote lots have available spaces while the core stays jammed — and the employee parking shortage that drives much of the merchant permit demand hasn’t been touched by the additional supply.
The study projects the city will need up to 295 additional spaces downtown and 80 in North Manhattan Beach — a combined gap of 375 spaces. That number accounts for commercial properties being redeveloped at higher density, which would generate more customers and employees than the current parking supply can serve.The number also accounts for general growth in foot traffic and business activity; and existing demand that already goes unmet.
Notably, the projections don’t address peak summer weekends. The strategies are designed to manage the summer crush through pricing, enforcement and alternatives to driving.
The Council voted 5-0 to adopt a Coastal Development Permit approving the study and its 33 recommended strategies. They range from replacing the city’s 500-plus individual parking meters with multi-space kiosks and launching a mobile payment app — both are already underway. The recommendations also include longer-term measures, such as new parking facilities, establishing a parking benefits district and pursuing public-private partnerships for additional supply. The study identifies several potential sites for new parking, including the US Bank parcel, the Lot 3 site, a Chevron-owned lot in North Manhattan Beach that once held roughly 110 parking spaces, and Lot 4 in North Manhattan Beach, which is nearing the end of its useful life and could be rebuilt with additional levels or a puzzle-stacker system.
Of the 38 strategies Walker originally proposed, the council had rejected five at a November meeting — most notably the elimination of parking minimum requirements in commercial districts, and real-time dynamic pricing, both of which failed unanimously.
The more contentious issues last week involved two pricing questions staff brought to council for direction: whether to establish an automatic annual escalator for parking meter rates, and what to do about the merchant parking permit program.
The merchant permits have become a friction point. In April 2025, the council raised monthly permits from $27 to $45 and six-month permits from $160 to $250. And it eliminated bulk discounts. The study recommends raising six-month permits to $600. Revenue is up 109 percent since the increase, but about 28 six-month permits have gone unsold and there is no longer a waitlist for the Metlox parking structure.
Downtown business owner Mike Zislis urged the council not to raise merchant permit rates further.
“Please don’t raise the rates on merchants,” Zislis said. “As you can see from his report, the merchant parking is available because you’ve hit the top of the market. It went from $100 a spot to $250 for six months…This is not Westwood, or Century City. This is Manhattan Beach. The employees who work in our retail outlets and our restaurants are not lawyers and doctors.”
Zislis argued the employees who need the permits generally commute from outside the city and can’t realistically bike or rideshare to work. He urged the council to direct rate increases to street meters instead, and said parking revenue should be used only for building and maintaining parking infrastructure.
Kelly Stroman, executive director of the Downtown Manhattan Beach Business Association, echoed the concern.
“Every time you guys do this, it really affects the hire-ability of a lot of the small businesses, because not all the small businesses can afford to pay for the passes,” she said.
Stroman also flagged a longstanding issue: no new merchant permits have been issued for Lot 1 — behind Manhattan Avenue businesses between 9th and 11th streets — since 2008, even though spaces sit empty. Zandvliet confirmed the prior study called for sunsetting those permits as businesses turned over, and said the issue would be revisited as part of the comprehensive merchant permit review.
Council’s direction was to hold merchant permit rates at their current levels and bring the entire program back for a thorough review — including who qualifies for permits, how many each business can get, how to accommodate part-time employees, and how to handle businesses required by their use permits to purchase large numbers of permits.
“We all agree that the threshold is where it needs to be,” Councilmember Steve Charelian said.
Howorth pushed for future increases to be phased in gradually rather than imposed in large jumps.
Charelian also directed staff to examine outdated provisions in the city’s Local Coastal Program — specifically the roughly 100 free, long-term parking spaces near Live Oak Park and 50 near the Shade Hotel, which he said haven’t been revisited in 35 years and aren’t being used for their intended purpose. “It’s for beach access,” he said. “But it’s anything but beach access.”
“We’re not here to just do things because we’ve done them this way in the past,” Charelian said.
On meters, staff asked whether council wanted to authorize incremental annual rate adjustments tied to a cost-of-living index, with a maximum cap, so the city wouldn’t need to return for a new Coastal Development Permit each time. The study recommends seasonal rates ranging from $2 per hour on off-peak weekdays to $4 per hour on summer weekends for downtown on-street parking. Council was receptive but took no specific action; the meter rate question will return alongside the merchant permit review.
Resident Paiwei Wei spoke in support of the study’s microtransit strategy, noting that parts of the city near Mira Costa High School are underserved by transit. Wei asked that any future microtransit service connect to the Metro K Line stations at Douglas and Redondo Beach, both less than a mile from the city border.
“I think it’s going to really give seniors, and kids who don’t have the ability to drive, access to the rest of the city,” Wei said.
The council took a step toward that vision later in the evening, approving a six-month microtransit pilot with Circuit Transit. The company will deploy five electric vehicles, citywide, with service extending to the Metro K Line’s Douglas Station in El Segundo.
Long-time resident Jim Burton said the study’s language on residential neighborhood protections lacked anything specific.
“I’m looking for meat and teeth, something that we can do,” Burton said. “I’m looking for something for residents. This city is surrounded…We’re one of the only coastal cities in all of California where you need to drive through a residential area in order to get to commercial. I think maybe Balboa Island and Carmel might be close seconds, but Balboa Island is not on the ocean. Whatever happens, tonight’s direction to staff should be to make sure that residential uses are protected.”
The approved study’s 33 strategies will be implemented over the coming years, with high-priority items first. Staff will return to council for individual strategy approvals, including funding requests and additional Coastal Development Permits. ER
