Photograph by George Sakkestad
The parking lot at the Blossom Hill Pavilion was packed with cars on a recent weekday at noon.
By Clarence Cromwell
Since Blossom Hill Pavilion, the new shopping center at Blossom Hill Road and Los Gatos Boulevard, opened in August, residents have raised questions about parking there.
In letters to the editor of this newspaper and in notes posted on an online bulletin board, residents complained that there aren't enough spaces at the lot, and that it's difficult to back out of spaces or negotiate driveways.
Planning officials have some answers to the questions.
Marty Jacobson wrote to the Los Gatos Weekly-Times when the center first opened to say he thinks parking will run out when all the shops open up.
"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that parking is already barely adequate at peak hours," he wrote. "Even in the middle of a quiet Tuesday afternoon, at least half the spaces were occupied. Once the bookstore and coffee shop open, it is obvious that parking will be totally inadequate."
In a phone interview last week, Jacobson said he hasn't yet noticed a parking crunch on his regular visits to the center, but he expects parking to get worse when the last two shops--a Starbucks coffee house and a Jamba Juice drink shop--open Dec. 5. He predicted that parking will be especially bad on Friday nights.
On the Los Gatos Talk bulletin board in Metro Newspapers' Virtual Valley BBS, a parking discussion sparked up this month between a handful of Los Gatans and some town planning experts.
George Sampson asked on Sept. 30 how the center could be built with so few spaces; it appeared to be "packed" when he went there one day. On Oct. 17, Linda Dennis added that the aisles in the lot don't leave much room to maneuver.
When figuring how many spaces the pavilion needed, the town used the same formula it employed for most of the other parking lots in town, planners explained.
Town parking regulations require one parking space for every 235 square feet of floor area. The center has 21,475 square feet, not counting the Boston Market, requiring 92 parking spaces under town regulations.
An additional 18 spaces were required for the Boston Market restaurant. Because restaurants can draw higher numbers of customers than other shops, parking regulations require a parking space for every three seats in a restaurant. Boston Market wanted permission for a total of 54 seats.
The Starbucks and Jamba Juice shops, on the other hand, don't come with any more parking spaces than are required by the usual parking formula. So--get out your slide-rules--if a parking space is needed for every 235 square feet of retail space, and if a parking space allows three restaurant seats, Starbucks and Jamba Juice can have three seats for every 235 square feet of space.
That means 15 seats and five parking stalls for Starbucks; for Jamba Juice, it means about three parking stalls and 10 seats.
That leaves 67 spaces for Crown Books and Hollywood Video.
And the parking lot was built, just like other lots, to meet specific requirements in the Town Code that dictate the size of parking spaces and width of parking lot lanes, planner Bud Lortz said.
Lortz said he couldn't explain why lots might seem full at times to residents, except that new shopping centers are sometimes unusually busy their first few months.
Lortz said parking problems are usually restricted to the downtown. He added that competition for parking spaces is a sign that business is brisk. "The worst thing you can have in an area is way too much parking," Lortz said.
Crown Books' assistant manager Mary Burns said parking is better at the new center than downtown. Her store was on N. Santa Cruz Avenue before moving to the Pavilion.
She said she's heard no complaints about parking shortages or traffic since the store's grand opening, whereas those complaints were common in the downtown store.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, November 20, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved