The three public parking spaces outside 1516 Monterey Boulevard is what you can get in Hermosa Beach with a good reputation as a builder and by following the rules on the book.
This is not popular news on the block, however.
“I like improvement in Hermosa Beach, there’s no doubt about it. But I think we need to think about our neighbors as well,” said Dylan Lauzon, who lives at 1515 Monterey. “Three parking spots going away is big in a street that only has limited space as there is. If they can find a way to avoid it, I’d be very happy, and I’m sure a lot of the other neighbors would, too.”
The City Council could have saved those public parking spaces, but instead approved a plan that knocks those spaces out and puts in more on-site parking for the condos Monte Williams is building.
Williams has done about 20 residential projects over the 20 years he has lived in Hermosa Beach. He built ten homes on Manhattan Avenue between 1st and Lyndon streets that received commendation at a planning commission meeting. The Multiple Listing Service highlights Williams’ name when one of his properties comes up for sale, his business partner said.
Because of the recession, Williams hasn’t built a home in Hermosa for seven years. He bought the single family home at 1516 Monterey two years ago and plans to live in one of the three condos he is building while his business partner lives in another. Since he bought the place, Williams has worked with the city’s public works and community development department to make sure his project meets code requirements and is not controversial, Williams said.
Williams didn’t hear any grief about the loss of street parking until he approached the planning commission in April. The planning commission approved the project 4-1, but with a concern about the loss of street parking, according to the council agenda. And then City Council member Peter Tucker, who is a senior building inspector for Redondo Beach, “pulled” Williams’ project from an earlier agenda because he was concerned for the loss of the three public spaces.
So when Williams sought final approval from the council last month, he presented alternative plans that would have saved the three parking spaces on Monterey by having the driveway off Loma Street in back.
Tucker looked at Williams’ alternative construction plans that would have saved the street parking and determined they met code. But the original plan was nonetheless unanimously approved by the council.
“We’re losing three spots on Monterey,” Tucker said at the June 12 council meeting. “It’s advantageous for a developer to say, ‘I’m going to put more parking on my property.’ But when you lose three spaces in a neighborhood, that’s quite a bit. And it could be loaded from the rear based on what I’ve seen in these schemes.”
Williams pleaded his case to the council to approve the original plan, saying he had never heard any objections from city staff that looked over the details. Williams said the alternative plans would require shared driveway parking among residents, which leads to conflict, as well as smaller parking spaces, noisy 180-degree turns to maneuver into garages, and consequently dinged cars.
Williams said he was doing his job as a developer by providing enough on-site parking so that residents and guests wouldn’t park on the street.
And the alternative plans meant less on-site parking, with eight total spaces compared to 12 in the original plan. The eight parking spaces in the alternative plan would have been supplemented with the three public parking spaces left intact on the street, bringing the total number of parking spaces to 11. Williams’ original plan that created 12 parking spaces included two spaces on the apron of the driveway for a total of 14.
Williams’ business partner, Jimmy George, told the city council that he and Williams had a lot of money tied up in the original plan and it would be a “disaster” to approve an alternative to save the street parking.
The city council agreed. Tucker made the motion to approve the original plan that knocked out the three public parking spaces on the street. Other than Tucker, only council member Howard Fishman expressed concern for the loss of street parking but said he supported the project because no neighbors attended the public hearing and objected.
When Bob Huff, who lives on Monterey, heard that the city council did not approve the plan to save the street parking, he was disappointed.
“That’s bad,” Huff said. “It’s obvious we can’t lose anymore.”
“Soon we’ll be parking on PCH,” said his neighbor Odis Brown.
As part of his motion, Tucker instructed staff to begin placing the potential loss of public parking spaces on development notices.
“I could see that the vote wasn’t going to go my way,” Tucker said last week. “But if I could initiate some changes and how we ‘notice’ things it will probably help the problem by having staff start telling developers the council doesn’t really like this idea of taking the parking away on the street… I consider it a victory.”
The zoning code says if development eliminates a public space on the street, the builder must compensate for it with a space on the property.
“It’s a bad policy that we haven’t paid attention to for years and now it’s getting to the point where we almost have no parking on these streets,” said Planning Commissioner Ron Pizer, the only person who voted against Williams’ plan in any of its public approval process. “We’re losing our parking for people other than the property owners in these areas.”
The real issue is that many of the R3 lots are 30 feet wide, said Planning Commission Chairman Sam Perrotti. Installing a single driveway down the side of the lot makes for design challenges, and that’s why in order to develop the property, curb cuts must be made, which means eliminating the curb and eliminating public parking on the street.
Perrotti said the only way to save the street parking is to do “major modifications” to the zoning code. But Perrotti doesn’t expect that to happen, saying that about ten years ago the city held public hearings to review standards for landscaping and open space and “ninety-nine percent of the people that showed up didn’t want any changes,” Perrotti said. “It’s really difficult to make major changes to the zoning code, although we are going to be considering revisions. We are going review the general plan.”
“I do think that there are a lot of non-conforming properties that don’t have parking on site, especially rentals properties where tenants have to find parking on the streets,” Perrotti said. “Once those are replaced with newer housing that has adequate parking and parking according to the current zoning ordinance, that should help because then people that reside in the new homes will have adequate parking right on site.”
Williams lives on 19th Street in a duplex built in 1922, with one parking spot.
Williams said he understands Hermosa has a parking problem. He experiences it regularly on his own street. But approving a “bastardized” alternative construction project isn’t the way to fix it, he said.
Pier Avenue doesn’t have enough parking, Williams said. “You look at the redevelopment of Old Pasadena, you look at Glendale, Santa Monica, even Manhattan Beach, they all provided pay parking structures to allow for all those businesses that are being generated with the popularity of a city.”
Here, Williams said, all that parking for the businesses is being crammed into the residential neighborhoods.
