The new angled parking spots on Ventura Boulevard in Woodland Hills have their enemies and their defenders. They also have a learning curve, as a recent visit demonstrated.
Late last week, several customers who frequent the mostly mom-and-pop stores along the Ventura stretch were struggling to adjust. Some stopped traffic while trying to reverse. Others circled the block several times before attempting to park.
Glenn Hayden, frowning, was driving east on the public road on his way to the Business Machines Center in Woodland Hills to drop off a typewriter for repair.
The 85-year-old lawyer sat idle for 10 seconds in traffic outside the store as his eyes darted between the rearview mirror and the slots in front of him. Finally, he drove his 2007 Lexus ES 350 through four empty parking spaces before turning 90 degrees and backing into a spot.
“I'm glad there weren't other cars around,” he said.
Next to the newly painted angled lines are parking signs informing drivers to back up to these locations.
The switch to reverse diagonal parking (the first type of parking of its kind in the city of Los Angeles, according to Councilman Bob Blumenfield) created several new spots for customers.
It's just a corner of Los Angeles. But in a city where parking is both a competitive sport and a political flashpoint, even this small change is generating debate. It's long been a hot-button issue, from the proliferation of restrictive permits and confusing, derision-worthy signs to rising citation prices and parking battles on platforms and parkways.
For the record:
2:41 pm September 8, 2023An earlier version of this article misspelled Tara Barker's last name as Barkley.
A block from the Business Machines Center, salon owner Tara Barker, 33, said she was happy with the new spaces. She could now park in front of her store, Mane Idol.
That Friday, there were six clients and five employees in his 3,000-square-foot studio, which features a back lot with five spots.
“This is a great idea because it opens up valuable places for everyone,” the Woodland Hills native said. “I guess the problem is going backwards; It makes sense for safety reasons, but we've had our fair share of customers who have complained.”
The issue is divisive, with opinions divided among customers, store owners and community advocates since the installation of the angled floodlights on August 14 along a half-mile stretch of Ventura Boulevard, the Woodlands' main corridor Hills.
Steve Dozier, manager of Wheel World in Woodland Hills, stands at the edge of a new parking space that he says makes it difficult for cars to enter his bike shop on Ventura Boulevard.
(Mel Melcón / Los Angeles Times)
Some business owners are excited to welcome more parking, while others say customers have expressed frustration and threatened to take their business elsewhere.
The new diagonal points are on the north side of Ventura Boulevard between Ponce and Fallbrook avenues. On the south side, the new spaces are between Royer Avenue and Rigoletto Street and Fallbrook and Ponce. Parking meters removed for renovation are being reinstalled.
Bookstore owner David Kaye says he's witnessed a steady stream of crazy things in recent weeks while looking through the brown Venetian blinds in the front of his store.
“There was one girl who seemed very confused and went around the block about six times before giving up and walking away,” Kaye said.
He says he's lucky because most of his customers call ahead to make an appointment and know to park in the back parking lot of his store.
Kaye said he was aware of the changes along Ventura Boulevard since he is “active” in city politics, but believed many other store owners were not.
“For most,” he said, “the change came as a surprise.”
Half a dozen business owners and managers along Ventura Boulevard told the Times that the change caught them by surprise.
“The biggest problem is that people are uninformed and feel like they should have been warned,” Barker said. “I remember getting something in the mail about repaving, but nothing about parking changes.”
However, the move toward reverse diagonal parking is not recent.
Scott Silverstein, a former longtime member of the Woodland Hills Warner Center Neighborhood Council, said the seeds of the idea were planted in 2015.
Drove the 0.6 mile long Lancaster road “The BLVD” District, which is lined with shops, museums, restaurants, a bowling alley and parking diagonally, although in this case it is not reversed.
“It was beautiful and there was tons of parking,” Silverstein said. “In many ways, it was what many of us had wanted for Ventura Boulevard, not just the parking, but the revitalization of the area.”
Silverstein met with longtime Woodland Hills resident Dennis DiBiase, then vice president of the neighborhood council and an architect. The two came up with a plan that called for reverse diagonal parking and redevelopment of the area.
This type of parking, according to both men, allows for safer bike lanes since drivers do not open their doors to cyclists. Drivers also don't exit their cars into traffic, as is the case when parking straight, while entering traffic is “much easier,” DiBiase said.
The duo presented their idea at the April 2015 neighborhood council meeting, and DiBiase presented the topic in a print newsletter mailed to businesses and published digitally in July.
DiBiase and Silverstein presented their proposal to Los Angeles City Councilman Bob Blumenfield, who represents Woodland Hills and parts of the San Fernando Valley.
A sign on Ventura Boulevard in Woodland Hills alerts drivers to new parking rules.
(Mel Melcón / Los Angeles Times)
Blumenfield initially opposed the plan before hosting a community meeting in November 2016.
Within two months, the councillor, neighborhood council and other groups were involved in workshops, including three in 2017. A Phase I report was published in 2018 and called for increasing the 97 parallel parking spaces on Ventura Boulevard to 121 spaces that were primarily reverse angle.
Blumenfield secured $1.5 million through a City Council vote for the first phase of the project in April 2021, five years into a meeting and planning process. The parking change is the first step in a two-part revitalization project known as the Reimagine Ventura Boulevard plan.
The goal is to “create a small-town main street for Woodland Hills” along Ventura Boulevard, mirroring similar projects completed by neighboring communities Sherman Oaks and Tarzana, according to Blumenfield. In addition to parking, trees will be planted and landscaping added, with improved crosswalks featuring sidewalk extensions, flashing lights and new painted lines at major intersections.
Blumenfield said he didn't understand the criticism about the lack of community input.
The councilor said he conducted “door-to-door” business outreach in 2019 about the upcoming changes to solicit suggestions, organized a community bike ride that year to spread the word about the plan, and in 2021 and 2022 hosted a series of virtual meetings in the city. hallways. He also sent letters to business owners for three years in a row, most recently arriving in mailboxes in July.
“There has been a very robust engagement process for this project,” Blumenfield said, “probably more than most projects receive.”
Steve Dozier, who ran Wheel World of Woodland Hills for more than 30 years, said he was still waiting to receive counseling.
“No one has come to this store and talked to me about changes,” said Dozier, 67. “Because if they had, I would have told them that this has created a huge headache.”
Dozier said the removal of a center turn lane along Ventura Boulevard had cut off his and his employees' ability to head west on the road.
“Now we have to go out to the right,” Dozier said, “and make this big U-turn a quarter mile ahead for no reason.”
Dozier and employee Noah Barbush, 21, said they suspected business had slowed because of the change.
“It is now much more difficult to enter our parking lot without a turn lane,” Barbush said, “and because the [parking] The places are now very close to the entrance.”
Ray Wargnier, owner of Business Machines Center, said that while there have always been problems with parking along Ventura Boulevard, he believed the last few weeks had had more incidents than usual.
“I have seen accidents with [the previous] parking before,” said Wargnier, whose business has been on Ventura Boulevard for seven years. “The new thing is that you are seeing people [driving across] Double yellow line to try to get to the businesses on the other side, which is really dangerous.”
Wargnier, who received a letter from Blumenfield in July, said he had not lost business yet, but he had no shortage of customer complaints.
“There are some who just jump in because they don't understand what's happening,” he said. “Others have said this makes their trips more difficult.”
Silverstein said he was “disappointed” to learn of the parking issues.
“If you try it a few times, it will become second nature,” he said. “I don't want to be mean, but if you can't back a car between a couple of lines, maybe you shouldn't drive.”
DiBiase says the neighborhood council has a wait-and-see attitude, although the preference would be to keep the reverse diagonal parking.
“The lines are made of paint and not concrete, and we're going to try this for a while and see if it works,” DiBaise said. “If it doesn't work, we can always go back, but I really believe it will work.”
