[Edited most recently on January 7]
Nearly 50 years of free parking in downtown Glen Park ended abruptly last week when the gravel-strewn lot on Kern Alley was vacated and taped off. Two years of negotiation to legalize public parking there fell apart last November, and going forward the land will be for private use only.
“To say we were disappointed is an understatement,” said Patricia Hayes, who is managing the property for the Hayes family. The family owns some of the adjacent buildings as well.
In the end, it came down to trees.
“The landscape requirement of one tree per every five spaces and a five-foot landscape set-back from the sidewalk rendered the project unviable,” said Hayes in an email to the Glen Park Association. According to the architect hired to design the lot, the requirement would leave room for only seven vehicles.
The chapter is the latest in a long story of de facto parking and dense housing dreams. The land belonged to the City after the widening of Bosworth Street in the 1960s, but plans to create a city-owned public parking lot never materialized, and neither did a subsequent proposal to create city-owned public senior housing.
The lot was put on the market in 1971 and bought in 1974 by Tom Hayes and Bernie Kelly, both of whom owned several buildings in downtown Glen Park. (Bernie Kelly died in December 2017, and the Hayes family became the lot’s sole owner.)
All the while, people were parking there. But the land isn’t zoned for public parking. The eastern two-thirds of the lot is zoned for housing (RH2), which forbids public parking lot development. The western third is zoned “Neighborhood Commercial Transit” (NCT), which allows for apartments. Public parking lots can be developed on NCT land only if the owner applies for a short-term Conditional Use Permit, which in turn must be approved by the Planning Department.
With an eye toward developing the lot for housing in the long run, the Hayes family applied for a Conditional Use Permit in the meantime so they could charge for parking and thereby maintain the lot and keep it safe. The Planning Department denied the request.
Next Hayes went to then-Supervisor Jeff Sheehy for help. Sheehy wrote legislation to amend the City Planning Code to allow the multi-zoned parcel to be a public parking lot, putting in a sunset provision after six years.
Everyone seems to recognize the dual zoning is wonky and that unpermitted parking was a liability. In its recommendation against Sheehy’s legislation, the Planning Department hinted that someone should apply to rezone it all as NCT, though they didn’t promise to recommend approval of a conditional use for parking that might follow the rezoning.
Planning Commissioners themselves indicated support for rezoning the entire lot, as did some neighbors who testified. But that was not the legislation before them, and the Commissioners disapproved Sheehy’s legislation.
Nonetheless, the Board of Supervisors subsequently passed it in June, 2018, and plans to pave the parking lot were on again.
Patty Hayes came to the July 2018 Glen Park Association quarterly meeting and gave neighbors the news: The family was hiring Glen Park architectural firm SF-ARC to design the lot, and they hoped to develop housing there in the long term. The lot would no longer be free, she said, but the revenue from paid parking would be used to keep it clean and safe.
SF-ARC got to work but could not find a way to meet the city’s tree landscaping requirements and create a lot with enough spaces to generate the revenue needed for upkeep. By late November, after a second plan was rejected for want of trees, the Hayes family threw in the towel and decided to go private.
The lot will be available to the tenants of their commercial buildings downtown only. It will be paved, fenced, and have improved lighting, Hayes said, noting that at least it will look much better than it does now.
This does not explain the closure. Missing something?
Ban cars
If you’ve lived in the neighborhood for over 20 years you would remember our former neighborhood public parking lot on the back part of the parcel now occupied by the Canyon Market/library/housing building. In the front of the parcel was a market, and in the back a metered parking lot. It was great to be able to pull in, put $ in the meter for 1 hour and do some quick shopping at multiple businesses, on the way home from work or somewhere else. I did that many times in lieu of driving home, parking, and then walking back to the businesses. If the parking lot had not been there, I would not have stopped to quickly shop. The lot on Kern has been used for parking throughout the 24 years I have lived here. There would be no negative neighborhood impact to allow that lot to be improved, and for parking to continue for the next 6 years but with short-term parking meters (max time 1 hour)
I would urge the Association to get involved to broker a settlement between the City and the owners. Today I searched for parking in Glen Park for more than 15 minutes. I ran into a friend who had the same experience. The loss of the parking lot is having a major impact. I would gladly pay for parking in the lot.
I imagine the parking lot closure is a tactic by the Hayes family to help the supervisors rethink their disapproval of the paid parking plans. By closing the lot, neighbors will complain, probably to the supervisors, who then might feel some pressure (assuming they feel) to be more lax on the paid parking plans. Having no access to this lot doesn’t do the neighborhood *any good* at all.
I don’t mind them developing the parking lot but do they have to run heavy machinery on a Sunday afternoon and Saturday evening till 7 pm? Aren’t there some city ordinances limiting construction noise? I live right around the corner and this has a very noisy weekend.
This is really disappointing, especially given that the local businesses have relied on this lot for parking space, and cared for its upkeep. I would often see Gialina employees picking up trash in the lot to keep it clean.
What is “downtown Glen Park”?