History of Act V

By Jane H. Egly

Finding a parking place in Laguna during the summer is not a new problem. The following is some history on our peripheral parking.

A committee of five (V), consisting of representatives from the City, Chamber of Commerce, Festival of Arts, Sawdust Festival and Art-A-Fair, came together to seek a solution to Abolish Congested Traffic (ACT) in the downtown area. This ACT V committee decided that the best way to reduce congestion in the downtown would be to establish a peripheral parking area where tourists and visitors could leave their cars; the City would then provide a free tram to shuttle between the festivals, downtown, and the parking lot<bringing the people but not their cars into the downtown. The city leased a small pocket of land along Laguna Canyon Road from the Irvine Company and the Act V parking lot was born.

Over the years, Act V has become an integral part of the Cityıs official response to the flood of cars that invades the City every summer. In 1980,the Coastal Commission required remote parking and shuttle service in its approvals for the Sawdust Festival. In 1992, the Commission gave Act V official recognition when it required that the site be designated as public parking to accommodate a minimum of 318 spaces.

Through the years, the wisdom of the original committee of five has been confirmed again and again as planning and transportation professionals have come to regard peripheral parking as the solution to many of the problems that plague modern communities. The City continued to lease the Act V site from the Irvine Company until 1998 when the City purchased the property.

Grading and drainage improvements followed with the expanded area able to park 420 cars; however, ironically, the purchase and expansion of the lot were undertaken not to increase Act V's effectiveness as a parking lot, but to prepare the site for the move of the Corporate Yard from behind City Hall out to Act V.

Locating the Corporate Yard to Act V will gut Laguna's peripheral parking program, put the viability of the free tram in jeopardy,and overturn more than thirty years of City planning and tradition.