Downtown Pismo Beach needs at least another 121 parking spaces to accommodate beach-goers, visitors and locals, a consultant says.

According to a recently released parking study of the city's downtown core - Main Street to the north, Stimson Avenue to the south, Dolliver Street to the east and the beach to the west - the city lacks sufficient parking downtown.

Wilbur Smith Associates, which developed the study, analyzed parking in the core on a Friday in July 2006 and again on a Saturday. Both days, the downtown parking lots were almost at capacity by noon, if not earlier.

But how the city plans to solve its downtown parking woes remains to be seen, although many ideas were bantered back and forth during a parking workshop Wednesday in Pismo.

Most in the audience of about 20 people agreed there's definitely a parking problem in the downtown core, but they didn't agree on how to solve it, other than providing more spaces.

“I know people who won't go to Pismo because of the parking,” said Pismo resident Dale Kinney, who uses the Pismo Beach Pier parking lot almost daily when he surfs. “If the circulation were better and the parking was better, locals would go down there.”

Kinney said he'd pay for parking to help create a revenue stream for the city to fund something like a parking structure, although he didn't favor seeing the pier parking lot disappear in place of a structure.

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“It's kind of a social center,” Kinney said. “We (surfers) all go there in the mornings. It's a place where you see family and friends. I'd hate to see that go away.”

Pismo only has about $200,000 in parking fees on hand that it could use to implement some type of long-term parking management program in the city.

Exacerbating the need for more parking spaces downtown is the city's imminent loss of a 120-space dirt lot next to the pier lot, where a tentative tract map has been approved for a mixed-use/residential project.

If the so-called Benson project is constructed on the site, the city would lose the 135 parking spaces at the pier parking lot. However, project developers have expressed interest in working with the city on constructing a joint underground parking structure there.

Many in the audience advocated building the underground structure, but others were adamantly opposed to the idea.

“The worst possible place in town to have a parking structure is next to the pier; the citizens deserve more,” said Marian Mello, longtime Pismo Beach resident and former city councilwoman. “I'm not in favor of putting a parking lot on our prize property in Pismo Beach.”

Although no consensus was reached during the workshop, the overall sentiment was if the parking problem isn't solved soon downtown will be no more.

“If there aren't more spaces added, there's going to be major, major problems in the future,” said Shannon Dempsey, who has owned Client Marketing Systems on Price Street for eight years.

Dempsey said parking on Price Street is also deficient and will only become worse after the Benson project is constructed.

The city will hold another parking workshop at 6 p.m. Jan. 24 at the Shell Beach Veterans Hall, 230 Leeward Ave.

Jan. 18, 2007