A Monday night meeting about parking at times grew heated, but also brought some welcome news for the neighbors on Third Avenue.
Roughly 40 people attended the discussion about the parking that has been removed on Third Avenue and Sherman Street near West Side Tavern. No parking signs went up at the end of December, resulting in the net loss of approximately nine parking spaces, according to the city, including the on-street parking outside West Side Tavern.
West Side Tavern owner Wes Isbutt expanded seating during COVID, removing his three on-site parking spaces and leaving only street parking for his customers. Isbutt has been pushing for the city to bring back at least some parking and has circulated a petition that he said has already received hundreds of signatures.
Isbutt was one of many neighbors who attended Monday’s meeting, which city officials said was intended to get out correct information about the parking changes, answer questions and inform those along that area of Third Avenue about upcoming construction.
City Manager Harold Dominguez also said the city should have held such a meeting to inform the neighborhood before the parking changes happened, taking the responsibility for that communication failure. He added that systems have been put in place to make sure that type of lapse doesn’t happen again.
The city began looking at Third Avenue after some neighbors raised concerns about parking and safety at a Coffee with Council in August. One point he emphasized was that parking on public streets, even if that’s outside someone’s home, is for the public and anyone can park there as long as they do so legally.
Dominguez explained that the city responds to these types of requests from a complaint-based approach. He estimated Longmont receives roughly 10 such requests related to parking a year that go through a similar process.
“We do not proactively go out and look for these,” Dominguez said. “We just don’t have the staff to do that on a regular basis. These are brought to us through members of the community, our sanitation folks, our code enforcement folks, those types of issues.”
The one issue those neighbors brought up that the city looked into related to safety when turning from Sherman Street onto Third Avenue.
The city spent a few months looking into the intersection. According to section 205.02 of Longmont’s design standards, the sightlines on Third Avenue from Sherman Street should be 250 feet, which city officials said is why it was decided that that parking be removed.
However, a change that could bring back three parking spaces on Sherman Street was announced at the meeting. Throughout the city, parking is not permitted within 30 feet of a stop sign. On Sherman Street, the no parking zone leading up to the stop sign was closer to 50 feet due to the narrowness of the road and the thought that the extra space was needed for emergency vehicle turn radius.
On Friday, the city took out a firetruck to see if the 50 feet was actually needed, and found that the truck could make the turn with a 30 foot radius. City engineer Jim Angstadt recommended those extra signs be removed.
Additionally, despite the fact that the city has not typically painted curbs as a practice, Angstadt announced that curbs in that neighborhood will be painted as a pilot program to make it clear where folks can and cannot park.
Dominguez emphasized that future projects could also mean structural changes for the street to bring back more parking. A waterline replacement project and storm water project are both planned soon in that location, followed by a repaving project along Third Avenue from Main Street to Sunset Street.
“It is really likely that when we go in and we deal with those long term issues there’s going to be parking that is going to be recreated as a result of the work we’re going to do from a structural component,” Dominguez said.
One issue that came up during the question and answer portion of the meeting was why the city had not installed crosswalks across Third Avenue at Sherman. Angstadt explained that any new crosswalks would need to be Americans with Disabilities Act compliant, which is complicated by the curbs in the area.
Others pointed to the perceived inconsistency of enforcing sightline standards across the city, and Dominguez said that if other intersections are brought to the city’s attention they will go through the same process. He stressed that the city works to ensure that the standards are enforced pragmatically across Longmont.
A number of frustrations were raised during the meeting, which at times grew heated, hitting on the antagonism between neighbors and the operation of West Side Tavern in a mostly residential area. Dominguez explained that the city offers a mediation service for these types of issues.
“We would love to find a way to bring people together and go through our mediation process that we use for everyone and use in different neighborhoods,” he said. “We would love to get there. I think what we need is a commitment from everyone saying we’re willing to go into that process and move through this.”
The city officials encouraged interested neighbors to make comments and recommendations on Third Avenue at engage.longmontcolorado.gov/3rd-avenue-updates. They said additional meetings on this topic may be scheduled, along with a neighborhood open house that will be held sometime in April to discuss general improvements and construction projects coming soon to Third Avenue.
