![\"meeter](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/meeter-dave-schwab.jpg\" "\\"meeter")
<\/a>Uptown is at a crossroads in parking management.\nDepending on who you consult, the community is either heading in the right direction – or taking a wrong turn.
\nConcerning parking, there is a difference between perception and reality, said Carol Schultz, executive director of Uptown Partnership, the community-based, nonprofit corporation that funds parking, traffic and pedestrian improvements with a percentage of revenues collected by the city from Uptown parking meters.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we perceive a parking problem, there\u2019s a parking problem,\u201d Schultz said. \u201cThe misperception might be that there\u2019s nothing we can do about it.\u201d
\nUptown Partnership has spent more than $2.5 million since 1999 to upgrade parking in Hillcrest. Recently, it allocated an estimated $600,000 to $700,000 – which is 45 percent of the cost – to replace Uptown’s 1,368 meters, with installation starting this fiscal year on July 1 and likely occurring over the next four years, Schultz said. The City of San Diego will pay the remaining 55 percent of the cost of the new meters.<\/p>\n
All city meters are to be replaced with multi-space pay stations or single-head meters linked to a web-based information system providing real-time usage data, which allows flexible rate structures and time limits while tracking revenues. None of these features is available with the current meters. The new solar-powered meters will accept credit cards as well as coins.<\/p>\n
The City of San Diego established its Community Parking District program in 1997 as part of a strategy to invest in older neighborhood commercial districts and provide parking-impacted communities with a way to devise and implement parking management solutions to meet their specific needs. Uptown Partnership administers the community parking district that extends from Park Boulevard on the east to Interstate 5 on the west, and from Mission Valley south to Elm Street. The parking district is funded by a 45 percent share of parking meter revenues in the district, which amounted to approximately $850,000 in the last fiscal year, said Schultz. She added that Uptown Partnership is voluntarily participating in the city’s meter utilization plan, backed by the mayor, because the group feels it’s the right way to go in parking management.
\nHowever, not everyone in the community is on board with Uptown Partnership\u2019s ambitious meter-replacement plan. Cecelia Moreno, owner of Crest Caf\u00e9 on Robinson Avenue, believes Uptown Partnership\u2019s stewardship of the parking situation has gotten sidetracked. \u201cThe mission of the community parking district is to procure more parking for the benefit of residents and businesses,\u201d she said. \u201cThey have not fulfilled that mission.\u201d
\nMoreno is \u201cvehemently opposed\u201d to Uptown’s intent to follow the city’s plan to replace the old gray metal meters in Uptown with high-tech new ones. \u201cWe need to have an entity within the community that we can trust to make the right decision, instead of just doing what the mayor needs them to do,\u201d she said. \u201cI have a problem with expending reserve funds for new-technology meters. If the city of San Diego wants to put in new-tech meters, they should pay for it, not take it out of parking district money which is our money: tax dollars.\u201d
\nSchultz defended the city\u2019s parking meter utilization plan and the partnership\u2019s desire to participate in it. \u201cThe plan is going to promote turnover in existing parking spaces,\u201d she said, \u201cand the new meter technology is going to use credit cards and relieve the pressure on high-demand areas.\u201d
\nThe city\u2019s plan for meter utilization is being modified in response to comments at a city council hearing held in March. Assuming the council adopts a plan that allows parking districts to vary meter rates and time limits, the Uptown Partnership board has stated publicly that it will focus on lowering meter rates at under-utilized meters as a means of relieving pressure to park in high-demand areas.
\nSchultz said a downtown pilot program found that lowering parking meter rates and extending their time limits led to higher use of under-utilized meters. \u201cOne thrust of the program is to tailor just an area of a few blocks to local conditions,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve not done a (parking) pilot in Uptown, but it stands to reason the toolbox they\u2019ve been using in downtown would be useful in Uptown.\u201d
\nPresently the city has one parking rate, $1.25 an hour, and a two-hour meter time limit. \u201cI think the downtown pilot showed us the usefulness of being able to vary that on a neighborhood level,\u201d said Schultz.
\nMoreno disagreed with comparing Uptown’s parking situation to downtown. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to be lumped in with downtown,” she said. “We think our parking needs are inherently different and unique.\u201d
\n\u201cI am competing with the resurgence of North Park and they don\u2019t have meters,\u201d said Moreno. \u201cSo I think this is a horrible time to be expending that (new meter) money, which doesn\u2019t add new parking. I have a problem with the mayor’s proposal in that the decision-making entity is the community parking district, of which I have no confidence. We have asked the mayor and city council to remove Uptown from any parking utilization plan until we have a community parking district that is responsive to their mission and to the community.\u201d
\nMoreno also objects to the composition of the partnership\u2019s nine-member volunteer board, only one of whom, she said, has a storefront business in Uptown. She also doesn\u2019t like it that the board\u2019s current bylaws allow members to serve in perpetuity. \u201cI would like to see a complete revamping of the Uptown Partnership so it\u2019s no longer an insular board content to nominate and elect themselves,\u201d she said.
\nMoreno would also like to see the partnership board increased to 15 members. And she feels they need to do a more a proactive job of selling themselves to the community. \u201cPeople don\u2019t even know that they exist,\u201d she said.
\nSchultz disagreed with Moreno\u2019s take on the partnership\u2019s board. \u201cThe board of directors has been very active,\u201d she said. \u201cFor the first eight or nine years, everyone thought the best way of addressing the issue was to build a parking structure in Hillcrest.\u201d
\nSchultz said the partnership board looked at half a dozen prospective properties for parking structures over the years, but none of them panned out. They don\u2019t pencil out either. \u201cOur board has determined it isn\u2019t financially feasible any longer to go ahead with the idea of constructing a parking garage,\u201d said Schultz. \u201cThe revenues coming into the parking district for Uptown are nowhere near what is required to construct a parking garage.\u201d
\nInstead, Schultz said, the partnership board has determined the wiser course is to manage existing parking spaces by replacing parallel spaces with angled spaces.
\nMoreno suggested one solution to finding more parking that doesn\u2019t involve installing costly new meters: \u201cWe need some parking lots,\u201d she said, \u201cnot fancy garages like North Park. Parking districts should be creative about how they add parking spaces to an urban area and they haven\u2019t done that, just had studies and paid consultants. It\u2019s a boondoggle, an abject failure – real discouraging.\u201d
\nSchultz is optimistic that Uptown Partnership is doing the right things and that the mayor\u2019s meter implementation plan is the right way to go. \u201cThe plan has the ability to tailor things to local conditions,\u201d she said, \u201cand I would envision working at the neighborhood level, with the partnership board and staff taking advice from the neighborhood as to what their conditions are, and what they would like to see happening, propose some changes that would help alleviate the situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dave Schwab has been a journalist in San Diego County for more than 20 years and has worked on several publications including the San Diego Business Journal and the La Jolla Light. He resides in North Park. His e-mail is: dschwabie@journalist.com.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Dave Schwab Uptown is at a crossroads in parking management. Depending on who you consult, the community is either heading in the right direction – or taking a wrong turn. Concerning parking, there is a difference between perception and reality, said Carol Schultz, executive director of Uptown Partnership, the community-based, nonprofit corporation that funds […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":840,"featured_media":242725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Parking Problems Plague Uptown","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/840"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}