Council explores major civic‑center parking reconfiguration as pool nears opening

City staff opened a policy discussion March 17 about reconfiguring parking in Piedmont’s civic center in advance of the pool and dispatch‑center openings. Public Works Director Daniel Gonzalez presented historical context, an illustrative "maximum parking" striping plan that adds diagonal and undesignated spaces, and engagement results from roughly 500 survey responses.

Gonzalez summarized the tradeoffs: the plan increases short‑term (2‑hour/30‑minute) spaces, adds 16 ADA spaces (about 4% of the civic‑center public stock), and contemplates converting a Bonita segment to one‑way traffic to create 17 diagonal spaces. He said the city had traffic‑engineering and public‑safety input and that safety — including fire‑access red curbs — constrained options. "Parking demand exceeds availability," Gonzalez said, noting the difficulty of quantifying daily visitors and student drivers.

Council members pressed on pedestrian sight lines, pickup/drop‑off optimization, enforcement capacity, and Piedmont Unified School District parking (staff reported PUSD has about 44 on‑site spaces and restricts student parking). Police Chief Bowers described proactive enforcement and CSO focus in the civic center but said enforcement is resource‑intensive. Residents at public comment urged more safety analysis and asked staff to reconsider diagonal conversions on busy Bonita; pool advocates urged reserving or prioritizing nearby spaces for pool users to protect projected revenue. Staff promised clearer, downloadable maps, cost comparisons for physical reconfiguration (paving/curb work), monitoring of traffic counts, and a return to council with more data before any final decision.