Lack of parking resolved in Mesa Verde

Deirdre Newman

A meeting with the mayor has lighted a fire under a property owner to

help solve the parking crunch caused by one of his tenants.

On March 26, Tom Sparks met with Mayor Karen Robinson to follow up

on a parking crisis the Paul Mitchell Salon and Academy had created.

Students of the academy were overusing the residential parking on

Elm Avenue between Royal Palm Drive and Lemon Street and on Lemon

between Elm and Ponderosa Street. In response, the City Council

agreed to place “resident-only” restrictions on these streets in

February.

While Sparks said he has known about the parking problem since it

first occurred, when the school moved in two years ago, he said he

couldn’t do much until the city intervened.

What Sparks is offering now is to let some of the employees of

Paul Mitchell park next door temporarily and to convert a vacant lot

nearby to additional parking. These moves should free up about half

of the 70 parking spaces that are needed, Robinson said.

“We spent an hour and a half pounding out every option we could

think about,” Robinson said. “He seemed very sincere and very eager

to help improve a situation he acknowledges is pretty bad,” Robinson

said.

Representatives from Paul Mitchell did not show up at the meeting

and did not return calls for comment.

After residents complained about students monopolizing all the

parking in their area and parking illegally, a city investigation

found that cars associated with the school and with other nearby

businesses took up to 80% of the available residential parking.

Sparks said the new “resident-only” restrictions in the area will

force students to use available commercial parking along Adams Avenue

and Mesa Verde East.

“By the city taking the closest residential spaces and making them

residential- only, it will help redirect the students to the spaces

that don’t take up space from the residents,” Sparks said. “That will

be most of the solution to the problem.”

The city will also take away one of the two yellow loading zones

on Elm Street to create more parking for students, said Peter

Naghavi, transportation manager.

While the parking squeeze illustrates how much success Paul

Mitchell is experiencing, the city should also focus its efforts on

monitoring whether the school is exceeding the number of students it

is allowed to have, Robinson said.