Huntington Beach Council Abandons Pier Garage Plan

HUNTINGTON BEACH — The City Council on Tuesday abandoned plans for a 770-space parking garage that was to have been built north of the Municipal Pier.

In doing so, council members voted unanimously to scrap a project on which the city has spent $125,000 that cannot be recovered.

The city will also need another way to repay $10.2 million in bonds it has issued for the garage. If the facility had been built, the city planned to recoup that cost from parking revenue.

The city pays about $900,000 a year from its general fund to repay the bond debt-service, said Robert Franz, the city’s deputy chief of administrative services.

The $10.2 million in bond money that had been earmarked for the facility will instead be used for other capital projects, such as the pier reconstruction, the Huntington Central Library expansion and improvements on police and fire facilities, Franz said.

The council is scheduled in August to decide how the bond money will be spent. Before approving the measure, council members urged city staff members to propose projects that could generate income to help offset the cost of the bonds.

“If this $10.2 million is not used for something that could generate some funds,” Councilman Jack Kelly said, “we could be be piling ourselves into an additional $10.2 million (deficit) within the flick of an eyelash.”

For four years, city officials had been planning the garage, which would have been built on the existing parking lot immediately north of the pier. The facility was planned mainly to meet a state Coastal Commission requirement that the city replace 521 street parking spaces it is losing by widening Pacific Coast Highway, Franz said.

But oil wells were recently removed from the bluffs near Golden West Street, where up to 550 parking spaces are now planned. That new lot, coupled with the recent completion of the 830-space Main Promenade parking garage a block from the pier, will provide more parking than the Coastal Commission mandates, Franz said.

He acknowledged that over the long term, the loss of planned parking revenue to repay the bonds could complicate the city’s financial problems. The council had to cut $3.8 million from this year’s budget and faces a $3.4-million spending shortfall in fiscal 1991-92.

He said staff officials discussed continuing the project for financial reasons but decided that in the long run, it would be more economical to build the bluff-top parking lot than the garage.