Unsafe alleys and no parking limits or restrictions in front of
businesses leave new diagonal parking spaces downtown full all
day
Gilroy – A pack of angry single mothers who work in downtown Gilroy lashed out at city officials this week for suggesting that the women, along with other employees in the area, stop monopolizing prime parking spots on Monterey Street and leave their cars on side streets and in alleys off the historic main drag.
“Am I going to have to go out and get a gun?” one woman asked city officials at a Wednesday meeting to review parking regulation plans for the area. She and about 10 other female co-workers from The Rickenbacker Group, a collection agency on Monterey Street, comprised nearly half of the two dozen downtown employees, business owners and landlords at the meeting.
With the re-opening of a two block stretch of Monterey Street following a six-month road closure, officials are eager to revive struggling businesses by freeing up storefront parking for customers. But during a meeting marked by exclamations of fear and frustration, employees said they wouldn’t start parking off the main drag until the city improves safety.
The Rickenbacker Group employs about 60 people, almost of them women. They and other downtown workers grew accustomed to parking in a lot at the corner of Lewis and Monterey streets during the closure of the main drag. Monterey Street re-opened to motorists last month, but in coming days, workers will lose dozens of spaces in the Lewis Street lot with the onset of a new building project. And they don’t like the alternatives suggested by the city.
Business owners and employees on both sides of Monterey Street complained Wednesday night about vandalism, automobile break-ins and general intimidation by vagrants in alleys, as well as in lots on both sides of the railroad tracks.
“It’s a safety issue,” Dieanna Pemberton, general manager of the Rickenbacker Group, said Thursday afternoon. “We’ve been paint-balled, we’ve been mooned. We had a guy peeing in the alley and then running at our manager with his pants down.”
Moments after the comment an employee rushed up to Pemberton and informed her that someone was breaking into her car in the building’s rear alley, next to the train tracks. Minutes later she was pulled away to speak with police.
Yet the women of Rickenbacker and other downtown workers aren’t totally opposed to parking off Monterey Street. They expressed a willingness to park in lots off Eigleberry Street, and some suggested they would pay for a parking permit if one of the lots is dedicated for employees. They just say it has to be safe, and that means more lights and a beefed up police presence, especially in the evening as businesses close.
“The last thing we want is for a couple of incidents to make people think downtown is not a safe place to be,” Mayor Al Pinheiro said. “We’ll address those issues. We got the message.”
He added that concerns about scaring off customers with new parking regulations are premature, and that the city has no plans to impose time limits or install meters for three to five years.
But the city has to start planning now, Pinheiro insisted. The area expects more than a million square feet of new commercial space in the next 15 years, with hundreds of apartments and condominiums constructed on top of those new businesses.
The mixed-use development concept has already taken root in the form of several new buildings – including the one under construction on the Lewis Street lot – and more than 20 more are being discussed.
To sustain the momentum of redevelopment, city leaders continue to free building owners from mandates to provide parking spaces for new businesses and homes. The city plans to build parking garages and is looking into creative solutions such as rooftop parking above buildings facing Monterey Street. But such projects are years off and could require the cooperation of numerous downtown building owners, many of whom have proven resistant to change.
In the meantime, officials insist the city must prepare a parking management plan for an influx of businesses and residents as the downtown revitalizes. And that means time limits or parking meters.
Initial proposals unveiled Wednesday call for parking restrictions on Monterey Street (from Third to Seventh streets) and on most side roads off the main drag (between Eigleberry Street and the railroad tracks).
New technologies could help keep enforcement costs down or even raise money for the city. Timed spaces that photograph license plates and automate the process of mailing tickets could reduce the costs of paying a meter maid or police for enforcement, while meter boxes on each block offer a new revenue stream.
Whatever alternative the city chooses, the people who live and work in downtown Gilroy are not thrilled at the prospect of parking regulations.
Joe Mattos, owner of the Milias Apartments at Sixth and Monterey streets, summed up the crowd’s sentiments on Wednesday night following a straw poll, in which all but two people voted against parking restrictions of any kind.
“You need more parking,” he said. “That’s the issue – not trying to regulate what you have. And you need safer parking. These ladies are in fear.”
