Los Gatos Relocates UCSC Vanpool Out of Downtown Lot

Los Gatos officials have redirected two vanpools from the University of California, Santa Cruz away from a downtown public parking lot between North Santa Cruz and University avenues due to complaints from nearby businesses.

One of the vanpools is staying in town and has been temporarily using a public, unrestricted lot on Miles Avenue near Balzer Field. The other vanpool lot has been operating out of a VTA light-rail park-and-ride lot at Bascom Avenue and Southwest Expressway, in Campbell.

Both park-and-ride lots have been in use for the college vanpools since Monday.

According to Los Gatos’ Economic Vitality Manager Jessica von Borck, an informal agreement between the town and the school has lapsed. She also said the town decided to move the park-and-ride lot out of the downtown lot, owned by Jim Zunardi, due to several complaints made by downtown businesses about the lack of parking for customers and employees.

“We had an agreement with UCSC on the vanpools but that agreement has since expired,” said von Borck. “Staff has received inquiries from businesses downtown that their customers and employees were having a hard time finding parking.”

According to UCSC vanpool coordinator Joanna Palmer, there are 22 individuals signed up this quarter for the two Los Gatos vanpools, which is mostly made up of university faculty and staff members.

The school currently hosts five vanpools from Silicon Valley. The vanpools allow students and faculty from Mountain View, downtown San Jose, Campbell and Los Gatos to be transported together to UCSC, Palmer explained.

Palmer also said that the town has been working with the school since last spring on finding an alternative site for the vanpools.

UC-Santa Cruz doctoral graduate student Liat Zavodivker sent a letter to Los Gatos Mayor Steve Rice after receiving an email from Palmer notifying her of the changes on Nov. 18.

In the letter, Zavodivker states that there is ample parking available in the North Parking Lot, at the intersection of North Santa Cruz and University avenues, despite spaces used by vanpoolers.

Zavodivker said she has seen individuals use the lot as they walk to the local golf course, bike through the Los Gatos Creek Trail and has also seen a vanpool of employees of the South San Francisco-based biotech company Genentech use the lot as a park-and-ride lot.

The three-year Los Gatos resident, who is in the second year of a chemistry graduate program at the university, said she never heard of any complaints from downtown businesses and never saw the lot at full capacity.

“None of the businesses contacted us before complaining to the town. I wish they would have been more transparent about it,” Zavodivker said. “I never saw the lot filled up, not even during free concert days on Wednesdays.”

Los Gatos Parks and Public Works Director Todd Capurso said he and von Borck met with representatives from UCSC in the spring and the Miles Avenue site could be an appropriate permanent site for Los Gatos vanpooler to park their cars.

“I think it’s going to work fine, but we should watch it for a year,” Capurso said. “We found out that a fair number of vanpoolers are town residents, so we recommended another site.”

Capurso said the town will probably not pursue a contract with the university on the vanpool park-and-ride lot, but looks to establish a more informal letter of understanding.

According to Larry Pageler, director of transportation and parking services at UCSC, the school has been operating a park-and-ride lot in Los Gatos at least since 1998, and has been using the downtown lot for the past three or four years.

Pageler said that he and other officials at the university are satisfied with the partnership they have with the town and want to continue to have a good working relationship to provide a carpool for Los Gatos residents.

“It’s a happy situation for everybody,” Pageler said. “We don’t want to cause problems for the town of Los Gatos.”