The number of hours the parking lot at La Jolla’s Windansea Beach is closed at night is being reduced after the California Coastal Commission last week approved a request from the San Diego Parks & Recreation Department to revise parking restrictions at coastal lots from La Jolla to Ocean Beach.
The coastal permit application, approved by the commission June 10, allows the city to adjust vehicle parking restrictions at the city’s 35 public beach parking lots, though only 13 lots are getting changes. According to a commission staff report, those restrictions include closure hours, gates and time-limited parking.
Though the city already prohibits overnight camping, sleeping, parking and vehicle habitation, the changes are based on “extensive, site-specific documentation showing a steady rise in nighttime criminal activity at certain lots, including detailed police logs and staffing analyses,” the report states.
San Diego City Council President Joe LaCava, whose District 1 includes La Jolla, said in a social media post that changes that increase restrictions “will help address ongoing issues of noise disturbances and reports of criminal activity … which have been increasing over recent years.”
But with public parking providing shoreline access to visitors and residents who lack other means of transportation, some hours were changed “so that each lot is restricted only during the minimum hours necessary to address demonstrated safety problems,” according to the staff report.
One of those lots is Windansea, where closure hours are slated to change from the existing 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. to midnight to 4 a.m.
Friends of Windansea member Jim Neri said a poll of group members found unanimous agreement with that determination.
“I think police time is better spent addressing real crimes rather than people parking their cars in the Windansea parking lot between 10 p.m. and midnight,” Neri told the La Jolla Light.
Elsewhere in La Jolla, the parking lot at Kellogg Park in La Jolla Shores will remain closed from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m., and the lot at Torrey Pines Gliderport will continue to be closed from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m.
The lot at Tourmaline Surfing Park at the boundary of La Jolla and Pacific Beach will remain closed from 2 to 4 a.m.
An addendum to the staff report states that within 45 days of the Coastal Commission’s action, the city must submit a final parking program that includes plans for updated signs. It also stipulates that signs at affected lots offer information on available shelter resources. ♦
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