Parking spaces in new buildings downtown limited
From today’s Chronicle, “Over the objection of Mayor Gavin Newsom, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors passed legislation Tuesday establishing public financing for mayoral elections and limiting parking spaces in new downtown residences, garages and lots.”
“Debate before the vote on the parking measure centered on Planning Director Dean Macris, who lent his support to the legislation last year. Macris was out of town on Tuesday but Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier and Acting Planning Director Larry Badiner read into the record a letter, supposedly written by Macris, outlining doubts about the parking plan.”
“Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who sponsored the legislation, suggested the letter was crafted in part by Newsom’s office as an attempt to weaken political support for limits on parking spaces downtown. “I don’t want to put words into Mr. Macris’ mouth, but clearly there were aspects of the letter that you read that did not reflect his opinion,” Peskin said to Alioto-Pier during a testy exchange.”
So Peskin actually believes that another member of the Board of Supervisors brought a fabricated letter to a meeting as important as this? Highly doubtful. He had to take over sponsorship of this measure due to Chris Daly’s inability to get it passed on its own…
“The legislation would require most off-street parking to be built below ground. Parking spaces in new residential buildings would be limited to three spaces for every four units of new housing.”
And what will this do to the price of parking spaces around and near downtown? That’s right, Mr. Daly, it’s your fault AGAIN! What’s next, tenant’s rights for parking in SOMA? ABC News has a nice little piece on how a parking space is worth six-figures in some parts of town. Parking space speculation, anyone???
BeyondChron also has coverage of the drama that occurred during the meeting, while Daly attempts to get his voice heard on his blog. The San Francisco Sentinel doesn’t believe him. Ahhh, the drama!
Anybody want to run for Supervisor in District 6? I think nearly everyone is ready for a change…
If for no other reason, check out the last sentence in Daly’s blog post from yesterday, “[Mayor Newsom's Communications Director Peter] Ragone and these agent provocateurs did not get their intended response, they have certainly added to my righteous indignation and personal resolve to use the legislative process to fight for progressive policies and social justice.”
Alrighty, then!
Matt,
Anonymous at February 8th, 2006 at 8:30 pm ( )Controversy and drama aside, I’d be interested to hear your take on the actual legislation. Given the extreme need for new housing in SF, how much more difficult do you think it would be to sell a new condo w/o parking in downtown SF where transit options are pretty good?
I actually had some comments in a past posting about this…
As I said in that post, I really feel that they should start by dropping the parking restriction, which is now set at a MINIMUM per unit. If developers were given the choice, some would choose to build projects with less, others with a perhaps one-spot-per-unit maximum.
I sell properties to clients without cars fairly often, so there are people that live in SF, can afford to buy downtown, and choose not to have cars. But, that said, as we are all starting to see with rent control and attempted eviction controls, the consequences of telling people what they can and can’t do when they purchase properties (i.e. rent control, tenant’s rights, eviction controls) are almost always negative.
I think we’re finally starting to see that Supervisorial decisions based on ‘good intentions’ with regards to housing are all backfiring, with everyone but the most aggressive tenant activists seeing the lack of common sense in recent legislation.
I do think that Supervisor Alioto-Pier’s ammendment/counter legislation is on the right track (if we MUST settle for a restriction) of having three spots per four units (or .75 spots per unit) as opposed to .50 spots per unit as suggested by Daly’s original legislation.
Matt Lanning at February 8th, 2006 at 8:56 pm ( )