Hospitality Night can be an example of an auto-free downtown
Editor:
As we revel in Hospitality Night where we interact with friends old and new, take a moment to ponder how wonderful it would be to have a scaled down version every night, at a pedestrian mall on Forest between PCH and Glenneyre. Every town that has done this has met with fantastic results.
Imagine a street full of life, with the four restaurants spilling into the open air, the mall accented with planters, benches, and perhaps a stage at one end for occasional performances.
When I sit at 230 or Brussels Bistro or Pomodoro now, I see a parking lot on Glenneyre. It's such a shame that we must subordinate the human experience to the car. Surely this is a senseless pass-through that clogs up southbound traffic on PCH. If Toni Iseman insists on a traffic impact study to get this done, I say yes. Or better yet, let's test it on a limited basis.
How about closing Forest once a month for Art Walk - a great place for patrons to end up after a gallery tour. If successful, we can slowly expand to other nights, and then perhaps make it permanent. Then we can level the "parking lot" and replace it with cobblestone.
The issue always comes back to parking. Surely we can find a solution. We created new spaces when the city opened the satellite parking. Or how about Toni's idea to move the bus station and convert that to parking? And most seem in favor of the long stalled parking structure at the Village Entrance. If funding is an issue, why not extend the half-cent sales tax now being levied for Bluebird Canyon for the three more years originally budgeted, but instead earmark it for the parking structure? Or let a developer build it as mixed use, and have them shoulder the costs? The net is, we are creative enough to find a way to replace the parking.
If thousands of locals can descend on downtown for a night of inspired revelry without a parking cataclysm, surely we can exchange the few dozen parking spots on Forest for a vibrant town center that inspires the human experience on our most beautiful commercial street.
Billy Fried Laguna Beach
