Solution driven Parking Study coming!

GOOD NEWS!

TAPS has reached a settlement with the City of Long Beach regarding the 3 lawsuits we filed in June and July. We did not ask for money for ourselves nor will we receive any. To summarize, the city will pay up to $250,000 for a solution driven parking study of Downtown and Alamitos Beach. They and the 3 developers that were a party to the lawsuit will also deposit money into a fund to help implement solutions that are identified by the study. The information that the study provides could change the city's current direction and help other areas of this city. Sign and pass our petition to help us convince our city leaders to take action.

We worked for weeks with the city to carefully draft the scope of work so that it can provide the types of help that are needed. We tried to enable TAPS to have as much input on the choice of parking consultant as we could. Jamie Hall & Jullian Quattlebaum (our attorneys) and Mike Kodama (an experienced parking planner) provided invaluable input and advice.

The bad news

We were not able to get more parking in those 3 buildings.

We have seen some developers voluntarily starting to add a little more parking but probably not enough to prevent parking overspill onto area streets. Unless the city changes those low parking requirements Downtown, we are at the mercy of developers. They generally do not provide more parking than the minimum required by the City. Those requirements were not based upon information that shows how much parking is sufficient to prevent their occupants from needing to park on the streets or area lots.

TAPS sacrificed its ability to file more lawsuits for at least the 15 months that the study will take to complete. During that time, many new projects will likely be approved with inadequate parking. TAPS' sacrifice was significant considering the lawsuits were the only way we got the city to even discuss the policies that are making our parking worse.

The public will need to convince our city leaders to make the changes once the parking consultant's recommendations are in. We need you to continue to pass the petition and online letter around, and to take other small actions when we tell you it's time!

Why did we settle?

We had a very good case but going to court would have delayed any progress significantly and, of course, the outcome is never certain in court. It has become urgent to change policies and begin solutions. Many new developments will soon be approved with inadequate parking and parking lots will be taken away. We settled in hopes of moving toward solutions much sooner.

Want details? You can read the actual settlement here.