BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Palo Alto City Council tonight (Sept. 14) approved plans for a six-story downtown parking garage that previously had been put on the shelf.
The garage will go at the corner of Hamilton Avenue and Waverley Street, replacing an 86-space lot with 265 spaces. The construction cost is $41 million.
Next to the garage, the city is planning to build 16 subsidized apartments.
“Usually parking garages are kind of boring, but this is a feel good story that this is going to enable more affordable housing,” Councilman Keith Reckdahl said tonight. Vice Mayor Greer Stone said generally parking garages are “pretty awful” to look at, but Palo Alto makes sure its garages are beautiful.
Stone asked the architect, Gordon Knowles from Watry Design, if the garage can be designed so it’s not a target for crime.
One homeless man killed another homeless man with a wrench while he was sleeping in another downtown garage in July 2024.
Knowles said the new garage will have a lighting and cameras, and the layout offers good sightlines and no dead ends.
“We can only go so far. I suppose human nature is what it is,” Knowles said. Hamilton Avenue will be narrowed from 50 to 43 feet, plans show. Chief Transportation Official Ria Hutabarat Lo said the city wants to add bike lanes on both sides of the street, and a drive-through for the post office will be taken out to make room. The idea of a parking garage at the corner goes back to May 2013. Watry Design previously designed a four-story garage with 324 spaces that took up the entire property, but council shelved the plans in February 2019.
Council members said at the time they were concerned about the $29 million cost and that the garage would attract more cars, contradicting their goal of fighting climate change.
“Personally, I think that corner looks better without a 50-foot building on it anyway,” then-Mayor Eric Filseth said.
The garage idea was revived in December 2023, when council discussed replacing surface parking lots with housing throughout downtown.
Councilman George Lu said he’s worried about the cost of the garage because downtown currently has a surplus of parking. But he said the city needs to move forward with spending the money.
The city is using a fund that’s been paid into by developers over the years when they don’t include parking in new buildings around University Avenue.
The city has collected these parking fees from developers since 1995 and spent the money on parking garages.
The current fee is $130,823 for each space that isn’t built, and the city has $12.5 million saved up for a garage, City Manager Ed Shikada said in a previous report to council.
The city refunded $1 million to developer Chop Keenan in April 2024 after a Court of Appeals found that the city violated state law by failing to spend Keenan’s parking fees within five years.
Other developers noticed the settlement. Developer Sal Giovannotto asked the city to refund $542,000 in fees, and former Avenidas Senior Center CEO Amy Yotopoulos asked about $1.9 million her nonprofit paid in January 2024.
Shikada said the city is planning on spending the rest of the parking fees.
“We are proceeding with using the funds for the purpose collected, so not expecting to return any funds other than what is required by the court in the Keenan case,” he said in an email.
Construction should begin late next year and take 18 to 24 months, Assistant Director of Public Works Holly Boyd said.
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