Last week Councilman Mike Bonin made a motion affecting in-lieu and grandfathered parking. Jim Murez, long-time Venice resident and former member of Land Use and Planning committee, made comments regarding the in-lieu and grandfathered parking in Venice in general. The following are his comments after reading the motion.

 

By Jim Murez 

Doing away with grandfather parking credits can have a huge backlash of effects on our community.

First, we need to know the scale of what we are talking about.  Making any recommendations without basic information is guessing in the dark of which way to go next.  I’ve been saying the same thing for years… we need a worst-case analysis before we can start to do any real planning.

The study needs to consider all properties in Venice, residential, commercial and industrial.  If we want to get a handle on parking once and for all, we must have a foundation to start from before we can formulate anything that is engineered correctly.

Anything less is just another political grandstanding in my opinion.  We have seen the City fail three times before the State when they asked for preferred parking – why… simple there is no real data of which to base the approval on.  What is missing and what is or will be created to ensure public access to the coastline.

Consider this, last week I lost a second appeal in front of the WLA Area Planning Commission when a residential property was permitted to change their use from residential to retail and buy their way out of providing parking.  The commission did not want to consider the cumulative effect one of 100 or more properties would have if they all asked for a 78% reduction in onsite parking like this applicant was granted.   They did not want to consider the fact that although the City has collected over 50 In-Lieu payments that with all this money based on the 2012 LADOT study these funds could only create 15 spaces based on real costs of construction which does not consider land costs.

It is like we are having a fire sale and parking spaces are the discounted commodity for property speculators.

The City has been collecting In-Lieu parking for 30 years (it started in Venice ICO in 1988) not in 1998 as Motion states.  Not one parking space has ever been created with the funds collected – over one million dollars by now!

So the problem is twofold, the wrong dollar value is being required for In-Lieu spaces and the City MUST create the parking if they are going to allow this loop hole in Venice.  Anything less only further impacts the quality of life for the residents and businesses and pushes the City farther away from ever getting a preferred parking plan or Coastal Development Plan approved.

Taking away grandfather parking will force properties to go vacant or operate out of compliance.  I suspect it will also cause a huge wave of change-of-use permits to be files prior to this policy going into effect or the property owners will all take a large reduction in value of their investment.

The only option (for commercial properties) will be to purchase In-Lieu spaces.  I guess this might be a way to fund building parking structures if the rates reflect real costs – something like $100k each when land value is considered as part of the actual cost to replace the space.  (But does not address the residential requirements when remodeling older homes where In-Lieu is not allowed.)

Mike’s motion is a good start but it is a big project and I’m not sure he is up to the challenge to find the funds required to incorporate the details to accurately formulate a plan.