Laguna Beach looks to add public parking, mitigate adverse traffic impacts

Laguna Beach city officials introduced a long list of traffic mitigation measures recently in hopes that they will have a positive impact on overall mobility through town and quality of life for residents.

The City Council at its June 13 meeting accepted the parking and transportation demand management report, which detailed various avenues the city plans to explore to alleviate the congestion caused by heavy traffic.

In January 2022, Mayor Bob Whalen and Mayor Pro Tem Sue Kempf were appointed to serve on the ad hoc parking master plan subcommittee. The final report offered up 20 short-term actions to be taken, most of which should be completed by the end of 2026, according to target dates provided in the report.

Priority measures include expanding available parking through partnerships with private lots, exploring seasonal valet parking in some city lots, and posting signage that will lead drivers to available parking.

The city also plans to employ dynamic pricing for parking based on demand, with the idea of funneling more visitors to the peripheral lots, then encouraging them to us the city’s free transit service to travel to their destination.

The council appropriated $130,000 from the parking fund to implement the short-term transportation demand management strategies.

City officials also proposed the city’s parking permit programs be refined. The report advised that some permit programs have been around for a decade or more without a substantive change in their purchase price.

“I think increasing the fees on the parking permits after leaving them too low for decades makes sense,” Whalen said. “It is open to all employees and employers.”

Employee parking permits have cost $300 for the year since 2008. The new rate will be $40 per month for the standard pass, while a premier permit will cost $80 per month. The city will put 500 total employee permits (300 standard and 200 premier) into circulation. Parking passes for Alice Court and Hagan Place will each be priced at $100 per month.

The shopper permit will remain $80 every two years, a rate that has been in place since 2006. Permits for 24-hour residential access, nonresident seniors and military veterans or families living outside of town whose children attend the Laguna Beach Unified School District will be $200 annually.

Councilman Mark Orgill commented that some of the proposed rates might fall short of keeping up with inflation.

“I think we were trying to balance 20 years of no increases versus the sticker shock of catching up all at once,” said Director of Transit and Community Services Michael Litschi.

Other ideas presented included the possibility of a residential parking program aimed at addressing employee and visitor parking in the neighborhoods. The city could also look at offering a parking validation system for downtown restaurants and shops that would provide free parking in peripheral lots.

The council directed staff to pursue some infrastructure projects to add to the city’s parking stock, including the addition of a partial parking deck at the Glenneyre parking structure (Lot 6) that could add 37 spaces. The city would also like to negotiate a long-term lease of the top level of the Mission Hospital parking garage.

The panel also opted to move forward with next steps regarding preliminary design of a potential three-level parking structure at the Village Entrance at 635 Laguna Canyon Road, which could yield 200 spaces near the downtown and the festivals.

Kempf reasoned that fragmented parking lots lead to cars circulating to find a space.

“One of the reasons that I favor building parking behind City Hall back here is not because I favor a bunch of parking structures but because we have all this valuable space right here adjacent to City Hall, and it’s grossly underutilized,” Kempf said. “For me, when I look at that, other than the Village Entrance, like the landscaping … [done] along the roadway, the interior of all that, that’s a lot of surface space, and we are space confined here. … My thinking is to get an estimate for what it would take to build back there to see if we can just create some more room.”