The City Council will consider a recommendation to increase parking availability in Piedmont’s Civic Center at their May 5, 2025 meeting.

City Council meeting: Civic Center Parking
May 5, 2025, 6pm
Piedmont City Hall, 120 Vista Avenue
Zoom: piedmont-ca-gov.zoom.us/j/82500567382
Agenda | Staff Report

Aimed at providing the best possible experience for visitors while maintaining safety, the proposed parking plan would:

• increase the number of short-term parking spaces by 45%
• create 13 compliant ADA spaces throughout the Civic Center
• reconfigure pick-up/drop-off areas around Havens Elementary for improved traffic flow

The proposed configuration was developed based direction received during two previous City Council discussions (March 17 and April 21), traffic counts conducted in April 2025, and input from community members and Piedmont Unified School District (PUSD) officials.

Proposed Civic Center parking configuration

The expansion of short-term parking addresses the top need identified in a recent community survey, which received nearly 500 responses. Over 80% of respondents reported that they typical stay less than 2 hours during a visit to the Civic Center, while roughly half found parking to be either “somewhat” or “very” difficult.

Expanded pick-up and drop-off on Highland Avenue

Responding to data from traffic counts and feedback from PUSD staff, the proposed parking plan expands pick-up/drop-off areas on Highland Avenue, while eliminating the existing pick-up/drop-off area on Bonita Avenue. This would:

• Add a new pick-up/drop-off area on the northbound side of Highland Avenue, across the street from Havens Elementary
• Convert Bonita Avenue between Vista and Oakland Avenues to one-way traffic, eliminate the pick-up/drop-off area on Bonita, and convert existing parallel parking on the Havens Elementary side of the street to diagonal parking, creating 17 new parking spaces

These changes are designed to improve safety and traffic flow during school pick-up and drop-off periods.

Proposal aims to optimize parking availability as City looks ahead to completion of construction for new Community Pool

In addition to changes to the number and distribution of public parking spaces, staff are also recommending a comprehensive evaluation and improvement of the employee parking permit program for City and PUSD employees to ensure that finite resources are responsibility managed within the public right of way.

This discussion follows several years of disruption to historical parking distribution in the Civic Center area, beginning with the construction of the new STEAM building and theater on the Piedmont High School campus, when “Permit A” restrictions were added to existing parking spaces along Magnolia.

An additional 57 spaces were lost in 2023 when construction began on the new community pool. Further spaces were removed or redesignated in summer 2024 to accommodate construction on the Police Department’s new 9-1-1 dispatch center.