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City Beat
Business association members pushing for new garage
Glen business leaders say garage will help solve parking crunch
By Chantal Lamers
Willow Glen Business and Professional Association members want to help frustrated drivers find a place to park.
Business association board members say after the annual Founder's Day Festival is over Sept. 10, they want to concentrate on getting a parking structure or garage built somewhere on the avenue. A parking structure, members say, will help alleviate the lack of parking on the strip.
However, finding a place for the structure and enough money to build it are hurdles with which association members are already confronting.
Board member John Karamanos, a co-owner of The Glen, says he suggested the need to look at parking and compare Lincoln Avenue to other downtown areas such as Los Gatos, Los Altos and Palo Alto.
He says those towns spent millions to do feasibility studies on whether they needed parking structures. Karamanos says, eventually, those cities figured out that they needed a parking structure.
"Parking is terrible on Lincoln Avenue," he says.
Karamanos says that another possibility for the avenue is to install angled parking and narrow the street from four lanes to two. He says this would slow down traffic on the avenue and allow customers to park in front of restaurants and retail shops.
Joe Guerra, San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales' budget director, says the only public parking lot the city owns outside of downtown is in Willow Glen, on the corner of Lincoln and Minnesota avenues behind such businesses as Nancy B and La Villa Deli.
Guerra says the issue will be whether the city wants to expand its parking structures outside of the downtown area. He says the city builds parking structures based on the revenue they can generate. For example, many businesses purchase monthly permits to allow employees to park in garages. Drivers also pay to park in the lots when going to bars, restaurants and movies downtown. Eventually, he says, the parking garages should pay for themselves.
Guerra says that when he was chief of staff for District 6 Councilman Frank Fiscalini, staff evaluated the possibility of installing parking meters--which would help generate revenue. Guerra says business owners were opposed.
Guerra says he doesn't know whether building a parking structure is a possibility. He says a potential parking structure is something the business association will address with the new District 6 council member and the city's streets and traffic department.
Comforts owner Gracie Wilson says her customers have a hard time parking mid-day on weekdays and on the weekends.
WGBPA board member and Willow Glen Coffee Roasting Company owner Chris Carris says the association needs to concentrate on a location that has the best ability to gain the most parking. "If we don't solve the parking problem, we'll choke."
Carris says businesses have two options: Find a way to get their hands on some city money; or have business owners on the avenue brainstorm on ways to solve the problem themselves. "It's time to understand that we're going to have a problem," Carris says. "It's going to take all of us to get this one solved."
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
