By Jose E. Navarro, MBA | The Navarro Report
SAN DIEGO — The city of San Diego is set to make parking free again at most of its Balboa Park lots starting next year, unwinding a paid-parking system it rolled out just months ago, though the San Diego Zoo will continue charging non-city residents under its separate lease agreement with the city.
The reversal stems from a legal settlement reached in May that also resolved a voter initiative challenge tied to the city’s trash-collection fees. Under the prior policy, which took effect in January, city residents received discounted parking rates at seven of twelve Balboa Park lots after registering their license plates online, while non-residents paid a flat daily rate. The city had pitched paid parking as one tool for closing a $258 million budget shortfall.
Matt Jawlik, chief financial officer of the San Diego Natural History Museum, said the paid-parking experiment has already taken a visible toll on attendance at the park’s cultural institutions, with daytime visitation down roughly 25 percent and turnout at free events down about 30 percent since fees began. Jawlik said the drop-off confirms what museum officials had warned about before the policy took effect.
The Zoo represents the one significant carve-out. Because it operates under its own lease with the city rather than under the city’s general parking rules, the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance will keep the ability to charge non-residents for parking even after city-owned lots revert to free. Zoo officials say the arrangement lets them distinguish local visitors, who can register in advance for free or discounted parking, from out-of-town visitors, while noting that roughly half of net Zoo parking revenue flows back to the city to fund park operations and improvements.
The split has drawn criticism from some visitors and museum officials, who worry that if Zoo-goers avoid the fee by parking in the newly free general lots, that could shift congestion onto the park’s other free-parking areas, further straining institutions like the Natural History Museum that are still recovering from the initial drop in visitors.
The Zoo has said it will continue assessing its own parking program after January 1, when the city’s broader reversal takes effect. For an ecosystem of Balboa Park institutions that depend heavily on foot traffic and membership revenue, the coming months will test whether uneven parking rules across a single city park create winners and losers among the cultural organizations that share it.
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