September 20, 2005

Parking in Potrero: A Paradise Lost?

By Daniel Porras
Special to the Neighborhood Newswire

In a city where it’s common to spend 45 minutes in a frenzied attempt to find a space, Potrero Hill has been a Shangri-la for weary parkers, filled with meter-less spots and unpainted curbs. But with denser housing and upscale chain stores like Starbucks moving in, parking on the northern side of the Hill may soon be as problematic as in the rest of San Francisco. And some frustrated residents are starting to point fingers at their new neighbors.

“[It’s] because of that stupid school!”, said a Galleria Tile saleswoman, pointing across the street at the California Culinary Academy on 350 Rhode Island Street. The saleswoman, who declined to give her name, said that her customers complain about the lack of parking, too. “The school should make the students park in the building,” she said.

Indeed, the large, mostly vacant complex that houses the CCA includes a 367-space public parking garage that, on a recent Friday afternoon, was mostly empty. “The construction will create more and more business for here,” said Samson, the attendant at the three-year-old parking garage, referring to the new mixed use development slowly emerging in “the hole” across the street. Academy students can use the garage for five dollars per-day, but most are taking advantage of free street parking.

Some students use lower Potrero Hill as a parking lot on their transit to CCA’s main campus on Polk Street. According to a CCA representative, “You can park at the Potrero campus and then take a shuttle [to Polk].” This transportation pattern appears to be popular with students who have classes at the Polk Street campus, where parking is scarce and expensive. Theresa, a CCA student who is near the end of her year-long training in the culinary arts, drives to Potrero from Redwood City, and has no problem pulling into a free street space on Rhode Island. “I have a friend that lives on DeHaro, and she says that the school is making parking [in Potrero] worse.” Many locals agree.

This isn’t the first time that parking and traffic threatened to spoil Potrero Hill’s homey, small town feel. “There were serious plans to build many new office buildings during the dot-com boom,” recalls Piotr Pawlikowski, Potrero Boosters Neighborhood Association’s Second Vice President. Those plans, and their accompanying hoards of dot-com commuters, never materialized. But Pawlikowski says that times are changing. “The parking around the commercial area of Potrero – the bottom of the hill – is getting very difficult. Not as hard as Nob Hill or SOMA or anything, but not as easy as it still is on the upper part of Potrero Hill.”

According to a 2004 report by the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), transforming ‘derelict industrial areas’ into ‘vibrant, mixed-use neighborhoods’ – as is occurring throughout San Francisco’s southern communities – will bring a host of transportation and parking challenges. Requiring new developments to include parking spaces, like the spacious garage at 350 Rhode Island, may actually make matters worse, according to SPUR.

“Many observers believe that more parking equals less congestion, as if the cars will magically disappear into the parking garages, but in fact the opposite is true. The more parking you build, the more cars you attract and the worse congestion gets,” write the authors of the SPUR report, which is entitled Parking and Livability in Downtown San Francisco.

Despite the complaints, parking in Potrero is still a dream compared with the rest of the city; this reporter recently parked streetside at the bustling CCA with ease. But Hill residents and CCA students would do well to enjoy the free parking while they can. “They’re talking about putting in meter parking,” said CCA student Andria, between drags on a cigarette. “That will suck.”