Los Gatos Weekly-Times Editorials History is likely to repeat itself Planning director Lee Bowman says the history of parking in Los Gatos is the history of a love/hate relationship between the downtown and the town government. The Town Council and business owners who packed the Council Chambers on Jan. 4 got their first look at the draft of the Downtown Parking Structure Feasibility Report. And it looks like history is destined to repeat itself. The $3.5 million available for a parking structure won't buy much, and the town is looking to the business community to raise the additional funds that will make the effort of building a garage worthwhile. Paid parking and an assessment district are two logical answers. In the past, though, merchants feared paid parking would send shoppers racing to malls. And the Business Improvement District couldn't survive the bickering over the question of whether the boundary was drawn fairly. Rather than continue fighting, the district was left on the books, but for all intents and purposes, ceased to exist. Paid parking and an assessment district both have merit. We don't think reasonable parking fees would keep shoppers away, but forcing shoppers to keep circling downtown looking for parking eventually might. Although an assessment district makes sense, it needs to include all of downtown and not just the narrowly defined historic district as it currently does. The Town Chamber of Commerce is already playing a key role in the parking dialogue. Helping to rally the business community behind some of the options that would solve the funding problems would be a major contribution. Jumping the gun? Some councilmembers think the town should have waited for adoption of the Back Forty Specific Plan before approving Bill Hirschman's office/retail complex. In the best of all possible worlds, it would have made sense to wait. But since there's not a building moratorium, the town really had an obligation to consider Hirschman's application. The developer appears to have worked closely with the planning department and stayed faithful to the spirit of the Los Gatos Boulevard Plan. Although the Back Forty Specific Plan will address its own set of issues, including how development meshes with the residential Highland Oaks neighborhood and Lark Avenue, fitting in with the Boulevard Plan is critical. Hirschman made a number of changes, including the addition of retail space to what was originally envisioned as office space only. He's also dramatically limited parking in front of the buildings and agreed to put in numerous trees between the Boulevard and the parking. A draft of the North Forty plan is expected in early April. We think the Hirschman project will fit it just fine. [ Back to Contents Page | Los Gatos Weekly-Times Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, January 13, 1999. ©1999 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.