Mourning on Melrose : Merchants Fear Parking Limits Will Hurt Sales

For years now, black has been the color of choice on Melrose Avenue. The whimsical neon-studded beacon for trendy shoppers, which boasts such novelty stores as Wacko and Retail Slut, may attract more people in black clothes than most funerals.

These days, however, it’s the Melrose merchants who are in mourning.

The merchants say that a highly restrictive public parking proposal expected to win the Los Angeles City Council’s approval by the end of the year would be the death of the pedestrian thoroughfare.

“It would just totally kill us,” said Sebastion Giefer, owner of Joys & Toys, a children’s shop. “We can’t deal with it. Where are our customers going to go to find parking?”

Neighborhood Parking Limits

The proposal that has Giefer as wound up as one of his toys would severely limit parking in most neighborhoods off Melrose during the day and prohibit it at night. Giefer and other concerned merchants say the restrictions would make Melrose--which many consider to be the city’s premier walking street--virtually inaccessible to anyone living outside the immediate area.

Others say that a threat to Melrose is a threat to the city’s quirky personality, because it is the only thoroughfare in Los Angeles, and one of the few in the world, that offers such an eclectic mix of goods. People shopping the one-mile strip can find everything from ceramic figurines to leather sexual devices and foods ranging from All-American burgers to Italian osso buco.

But that concern may not be enough to sway city officials, who are expected to side with disgruntled neighbors in the dispute. Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who represents the area, said residents have a legitimate beef against visitors who clog their streets.

“Melrose has become one of the city’s great streets,” Yaroslavsky said. “But we have to balance that jewel in L.A.’s crown against the blemish that exists on the side streets.”

Several people who were shopping on Melrose recently were dismayed when informed of the preferential parking proposal. Harry Fisher, a Los Angeles native living in Allentown, Pa., who regularly visits Melrose when he is in town, said he might stop shopping there if parking is restricted.

“I’d circle for about 15 minutes and then I’d go somewhere else,” Fisher said. “It’s already hard enough to park here. Less parking would be an incentive for staying away.”

Richard Mazalatis of Los Angeles, sitting under an umbrella at a restaurant called The Burger That Ate L.A., predicted that restrictions would “kill the street.”

Favored Spots

The narrow residential streets near Melrose have always been the favored parking sites for visitors, because the city provides only limited metered parking along the thoroughfare. Residents who live on the streets crossing Melrose between Fairfax and La Brea avenues say their neighborhoods often resemble large parking lots on busy shopping days.

Drivers usually start arriving shortly after noon, when many of the shops open. The parade of cars, with radios blaring and seats filled with boisterous people, can last well into early morning hours.

Linda Weiner, a homeowner and president of the Melrose Action Committee, said business operators should provide parking for their patrons. “We feel that the businesses have been very irresponsible,” she said. “It isn’t fair for people to come home at night and be forced to park two blocks away.”

Merchants respond that the city bears the burden of finding parking places, having encouraged the decade-long transformation of Melrose from a stretch of mom-and-pop shops serving the neighborhood into a mecca for avant-garde businesses attracting international jet-setters, skinheads, punk rockers--and middle-America tourists whose only nod to the black fashion ethic is the socks they wear with their shorts.

“Every other city with this type of shopping has municipal parking lots,” said James Zimmerman, co-owner of an imported ceramics store called Cottura. “L.A. is the only place that doesn’t. And that’s why we have this problem. We’re treated like stepchildren here.”

$8,000 Monthly Rents

Zimmerman is one of the leaders of Merchants on Melrose (MOM), an organization devoted to protecting the interests of about 200 businesses.

He said that merchants, who pay as much as $8,000 a month in rent for Melrose locations, have too much invested in the street to go down without a fight. They have hired an attorney to represent them in the dispute and may even challenge the city in court if officials go forward with plans for preferential parking.

Constitutional law specialist Carl Grumer said that merchants, whose businesses are a source of sizable sales tax revenues for the city, may have legitimate grounds for challenging the parking plan.

In a letter to merchants, Grumer, an attorney hired by the merchants, said preferential parking may even constitute a restraint of trade. Yaroslavsky, however, said business people have nothing to fear from permit parking, which has already been upheld as constitutional by the courts.

“Every time we have a permit parking district pending, merchants say it will be a disaster for them,” Yaroslavsky said. “But we don’t know of anyone who has gone out of business.”

Residents Pay a Fee

Under city guidelines, preferential parking is considered only in areas where two-thirds of the residents of a six-block or larger area favor the idea. Once a district is approved, residents pay $15 annually for parking permits. They are also required to purchase permits for guests.

There are 30 preferential parking zones in the city--up from 20 two years ago--with the lion’s share of them in crowded Westside communities, including Westwood and Hollywood.

One permit parking zone already is in place along a short stretch of Melrose between Crescent Heights Boulevard and Harper Avenue. That district is far to the west of the heavily traveled pedestrian path that most people know as the Melrose shopping district.

The new proposal calls for permit districts on each side of the busy thoroughfare. The northern district would stretch from Gardner Street to La Brea and from Melrose to the West Hollywood line. The southern district would run from Gardner to Highland Avenue and from Beverly Boulevard to Melrose, leaving only six blocks of Melrose side streets unprotected.

Shuttle Bus a Possibility

Yaroslavsky said the city is exploring ways to ease the parking crunch that will result from the permit districts. Running a shuttle bus out of the parking lot at Fairfax High School at Melrose and Fairfax avenues has been under consideration for several months. The city could also purchase parcels of land along Melrose for use as parking lots with the $8 million in parking meter funds that are allocated to Yaroslavsky’s 5th District.

The catch, however, is that any additional parking probably will not become available for at least a year, meaning that permit parking would precede anything designed to offset its effect.

John Strobel, co-owner of Angeli Caffe, said there is no way merchants can wait for new parking to be provided--while their customers shop elsewhere.

“It’s going to hurt our business a lot,” he said. “And it could be disastrous. This is a famous street. Where else will people go, some god-awful mall?”