The Beverly Hills City Council directed staff Tuesday night to draft an ordinance prohibiting preferential or overnight parking permits for residents who reside in projects that provide parking below what is required by the Beverly Hills Municipal Code. Along with the prohibition, landlords were required to inform residents living or interested in affected properties that parking was not guaranteed.

The motion stems from concerns that recently enacted state laws that prohibit parking minimums near major transit stops are being taken advantage of by developers using preferential parking on Beverly Hills streets instead of providing it themselves.

Beverly Hills’ Preferential Parking Program (PPP) was started in 1977 to accommodate demand for street parking. The program is only carried out in designated zones throughout the city, but these zones include a majority of residential areas in the city south of Santa Monica Boulevard.

The PPP allows for participants to park on streets beyond normal posted restrictions in the daytime and evenings, with overnight parking for qualifying multi-family residences. 

Originating as a study session item with no official decision being called for, Councilmember John Mirisch pushed for the item to be put on the agenda for the regular council meeting, citing an urgent need for action to address this matter.

He believes developers are taking advantage of recently enacted state laws to circumvent the parking requirements in the Beverly Hills Municipal Code. Mirisch in particular criticized AB 2712 — a law signed by Governor Newsom last month that prohibits preferential parking for commercial and large residential projects that are using state exemptions in Los Angeles.

“Basically, they are saying that if you are near public transit, you do not need to have parking,” Mirisch said of the bill’s passage. “If that’s the case, the theory and the reality need to align with each other.”

The Los Angeles-focused bill comes on the heels of 2023’s AB 2097 which prohibits minimum parking requirements for most projects within a half mile of a major transit stop in the state. It was described by Assistant Director of Community Development Masa Alkire as “probably one of the most significant bits of legislation that affected local land use,” with several projects in Beverly Hills being impacted by the legislation. 

In the 21 months since AB 2097 was put into effect, there have been eight multi-family or mixed-use projects that were approved by the city. While all of those projects provided some form of parking and some even went beyond the state requirement, only one provided enough parking to comply with the Beverly Hills Municipal Code, creating concerns about the future availability of parking in the city.

The avoidance of local parking requirements prompted Mirisch to press this matter. He argued that as it stands, developers are incentivized to provide less parking while compensating for the loss on public streets. This runs antithetical to the principle of the bill: to incentivize the use of public transportation.

Mirisch also suggested that unlike Los Angeles’ AB 2712 which exempts residential projects under twenty units, Beverly Hills policy should go beyond what the state did and cover all developments in the impacted areas near transit.

“I think it should be a blanket policy,” Mirisch said. “If [a developer] does build to-code parking, then residents don’t really need our preferential parking.”

Councilmember Mary Wells asked about handicapped parking placards and how they interacted with restrictions. While the placard does not exempt someone from street cleaning restrictions, it does allow them to ignore most other time-of-day restrictions.

She also asked about state law AB 1317 — which starting in 2025 will require that landlords of new buildings “unbundle” rent and parking spaces for the unit, providing it as an optional amenity instead. Wells supported the potential ordinance and emphasized the need to ensure that tenants are made aware that parking is not guaranteed to them by renting out the unit. 

“Including very clear language to the potential tenants that…parking is not guaranteed and they are not available to park with the permit program is very important,” Wells said.

Mayor Lester Friedman expanded on that topic, pointing out the importance of ensuring that residents in older buildings that won’t be impacted by AB 1317 are included as part of the information requirements.

Restrictions on overnight parking for areas not utilizing its full allocation was an idea proposed by Councilmember Craig Corman. After confirming that the restrictions are not planned to be waivable through the city’s density bonus system, Corman argued that small concerns like potential parking spillover were not significant and shouldn’t stop the city from proceeding.  

“I don’t think we have to wait,” Corman said. “I think we can act on our own, and I think we should.”

Vice Mayor Sharona Nazarian agreed with Corman that the unintended consequences of implementing this change would be minimal. Like Mirisch, she also spoke to the importance of supporting the overall promotion of public transportation use at the core of the state bills.

“On-street parking really is a scarce resource,” Nazarian said. “and we want to support Sacramento in some of the decisions that they make.”

The motion to direct staff passed unanimously.

Photo by Takako Phillips on iStockphoto.com