Parking ambassadors and other changes for the Stateline area of South Lake Tahoe

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - Parking in the Stateline area of South Lake Tahoe has always been an issue - too many cars and not enough parking spaces. Since redevelopment brought the Heavenly Village, the gondola, and other new additions including the Chateau building over the last two decades, drivers are constantly searching the area for legal spaces to park.

Many have used the parking lot at the nearby Raley's center, even with its signage that states it isn't to be used for Heavenly Village parking. The owner of the center, Tahoe Crescent, LLC, has had to hire security to keep parking open for his tenants but they are not allowed to ticket illegal parkers. The City-owned public garage at Heavenly Village is heavily utilized and fills up quickly on popular weekends and holidays. Add in heavy snow, all parking areas become a mess.

There are currently 410 parking spots in the Village Center main lot for their patrons. This is also known as the north lot. The south lot at the center is for employee parking and there are 112 parking spots, and the final area at the center is the east lot, which has 275 spots that are offered for a daily fee.

There are now changes in the works to amend the 2002 parking agreement between the City of South Lake Tahoe, Tahoe Crescent, and other partners.

As outlined in a pre-litigation settlement agreement, a parking management report created by Dixon Resources Unlimited, the City and Tahoe Crescent will implement many of their twelve recommendations.

1. Customer Service Parking Ambassador Program - The City will commit one full-time Community Service Officer (CSO) and a part-time CSO to serve as parking ambassadors. Their service area will cover the parking garage, Bellamy Way, and both the north and south lots at the Village Center/Raley's (formerly Crescent V). The South Lake Tahoe Police Department is in the process of hiring the new ambassadors and will try to meet the requested March 1, 2022 start date of the program. The ambassadors will have a fixed daily schedule that may differ by season, depending on peak parking periods each season. All revenue generated from parking tickets issued by the CSOs will belong to the City.

2. Create a Parking Management Zone - The zone will be the Village Center lots, the public garage, Bellamy Court/Transit Way. This will be considered one zone.

3. Parking Restriction Signage for the Village Center Main Lot - New signs are being designed for the Village Center main lot (or north lot) and branding of the wayfinding signage discussed in #4. Tahoe Crescent will replace the existing pole-mounted signage in the north lot with this updated signage. This should be completed by March 1, 2022.

4. Improve Wayfinding to Appropriate Parking Locations - The City will create and pay to install wayfinding signs along US50 between Pioneer Trail and Friday Avenue, along Heavenly Village Way.

5. Utilize License Plate Recognition System - The City will test using the handheld license place readers in the parking zone. The CSOs currently use them and they may need to be upgraded to fit the new needs. Who is paying for new readers will be agreed upon by the two parties.

6. Change Operational Model of the Garage - The City will look into a prepay parking system.

7. Renovate Electronic Permit System - At this time both the City and Tahoe Crescent do not want to implement this suggestion and work on higher priority items to see if they reduce congestion. Tahoe Crescent will continue to offer employees of the center parking placards and the CSOs will not ticket those vehicles.

8. Update Electronic Validation Program - This is also being put aside for the time being and see if the other congestion reducing methods first work. Tahoe Crescent will instruct tenants that have customers wishing to park longer than two hours to use the east lot.

9. Change Compliance Mode for Village Center and Public Garage - These will be implemented as suggested in recommendations 1,2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

10. Condisder Adding the East Lot into the Management Zone - Tahoe Crescent does not wish to implement this at this time and the City consents.

11. Investigate a Reservation/Pre-paid Parking System - This is also being put aside for the time being and see if the other congestion reducing methods first work.

12. Ongoing Assessment and Review - The City and Tahoe Crescent will implement most of the recommendations and meet quarterly for the first year of the agreement, and at least annually thereafter.

There have been reports on social media of predatory towing habits at the Village Center but the South Lake Tahoe Police Department has been unable to track them down on report to the department.

HEAVENLY MOUNTAIN

There has been heavy usage of side streets around the Heavenly Ski Resort when the parking lot fills up. The resort leases some of those side streets for parking from the City. During the holidays when the Nevada side of Heavenly wasn't open, SLTPD did heavy enforcement to try and solve the problem. According to Lt. Jeff Roberson, they redirected resources and scheduled overtime for staff along with reassigning them to work the dayshift to help solve the problem with ticketing and towing. Some of those resources were also used at the Heavenly Village parking garage which had a lot of issues with the heavy snow.

Roberson said those parking need to use just one side of the street as the signage states, and make sure emergency vehicles can still get by. Once the snow melts the City will look at new signage and it isn't very clear in all areas.

Roberson also said it was very hard to get vehicles towed after the holidays due to tow lots being full and they were unable to take any more.

PARKING GARAGE

The parking garage configuration will be examined as the two lanes at the entrance merging into one has created issues, as has the exit. There used to be a 'pay to exit' system but that caused a jam and Roberson said they have had drivers get into fights. SLTPD would have to just start waving people out to just keep the traffic moving.

There are currently 400 parking spaces in the garage.

Last year the City made a plan and there are now pay stations by the elevators so people can pay before getting to their cars and no exit pay options. They are still working on a traffic flow revamp.

The traffic flow from the garage and on Bellamy Way caused some problems during the holiday traffic during a storm. Drivers had trouble getting out of the garage and moving onto a dead-end street. Roberson said they will be experimenting with temporary traffic control during heavy days and push the vehicles to Lake Parkway and allow them to get back to US50 via that road.

"We are working on other solutions to park and still provide space for buses and trucks to get by," said Roberson of Bellamy Road where the City had installed paid parking spot last year. That parking area is currently closed due to ice so the City changed those spots from two-hour zones to "no parking.

"We have to balance multiple needs - parking, pedestrians, traffic flow," said Robertson. "If we shut one thing down to make traffic move well, then other needs suffer."

After the above parking issues are addressed they will look at the surface streets around Stateline to ensure drivers are following parking rules. The new CSO ambassadors will be covering all of the areas from Pioneer Trail to the state line.