David Mourra rushed his kids to their seats at Bay Street Emeryville’s AMC Theatre earlier this spring, not wanting to miss the opening scenes of “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” on the big screen.
But running late to one of the East Bay’s most prominent shopping, restaurant, and entertainment hubs meant that Mourra, who was elected to the Emeryville City Council last year, didn’t have time to figure out the mall’s new, app-based pre-paid parking ticket system for the few thousand spaces onsite.
That brief oversight turned into a $36 ticket he couldn’t dispute, because no one answered the ticket company’s phone line.
“Out of curiosity, I called again to explain what I thought was a rather sympathetic situation — I don’t aspire to be any sort of scofflaw — but I got a voicemail box when I called at 11 a.m.,” Mourra said during an Emeryville City Council meeting in June. “I’m concerned that maybe (the parking app) Park Smart is not set up to provide the level of customer service that I think deserves the city’s blessing.”
Apparently, he was never legally required to pay the outstanding ticket from the privately owned lot — a fact he only learned minutes before the council denied Bay Street the ability to enforce its fees and fines moving forward. He’s not the only confused Bay Street patron.
California law requires that these kinds of private vendors must formalize their rules and procedures with the city in order to legally charge customers for parking. When CenterCal finally asked for permission from the city in June — after the lot’s pay-enforcement gates were first removed last year — they were out of luck.
“We don’t want to bless a bad implementation or something that could be construed as hostile to the people who we serve,” Mourra said, quickly clarifying that he’s “not opposing this necessarily in the future or in all instances.”
Similar app-based parking systems are commonplace in many other cities, including neighboring Berkeley and Oakland. But some council members were concerned that the parking experience wasn’t as customer-friendly, intuitive or accessible as it should be.
Bay Street General Manager Izamar Hook told the council in June that the ordinance, which ultimately didn’t pass, was the only legal avenue for the business to enforce fees via tickets. Even though visitors who don’t prepay risk finding a ticket for the $30 all-day rate on their windshield, Hook confirmed that any ticket previously received in the e-meter garage “wasn’t enforceable with the former ordinance.”
The “modernization” of Bay Street’s parking system was first set in motion in 2021, when CenterCal Properties purchased the shopping center from UBS for $90.5 million. The new management immediately began renovations and improvements, including bringing in new tenants, adding credit card options to previously coin-operated parking meters and starting paperwork to add a grocery store onsite.
One of the biggest changes was CenterCal’s removal of the physical pay gates that blocked cars’ path in and out of the garage.
The replacement is a pay-by-space system, which is operated by a company called Park Smart — a setup reminiscent of a similar dispute in 2004 about the legality of parking tickets from Bay Street’s private lots, which were operated at the time by Canadian company Impark.
Chadrick Smalley, Emerville’s Community Development Director, said these gate-free systems, which ask drivers to pay for a numbered space at a nearby kiosk or mobile app, can be more customer friendly than access-controlled garages because “you just drive up, park and don’t have to deal with waiting in line,” especially during peak hours or busy holidays.
He said similar modernized parking systems were approved in Walnut Creek, Lafayette and Pleasant Hill.
“You want to enforce the parking and not just allow for the free flow of traffic without paying,” Smalley said, adding that the ordinance would clarify that Bay Street’s paid parking revenues go towards the center’s overall operation and maintenance budgets, not Emeryville’s own coffers. “We don’t want folks to be confused about whether it’s the city’s ticket or whether it’s being issued by the private parking operator.”
But these “tickets” that drivers find on their windshields are technically “mail-in parking charges” that customers are responsible for mailing back, themselves, according to a spokesperson for Park Smart.
Without express permission by city officials and ordinance in place, customers essentially pay those tickets voluntarily — regardless of whether the parking complex asked drivers to pay at the gate, pay using their stall number or pay via an app.
CenterCal still lacks any legal right to demand or challenge non-payment.
While Smalley drafted an ordinance that would have modified the city’s Municipal Code for private parking facilities, that legally binding legislation died during a public hearing June 20, after the Emeryville City Council did not vote to approve any changes.
Now, without the ability to demand payment of tickets, Bay Street’s only remedy is towing vehicles that are violating the mall’s rules. Enforcement, however, is still allowed to combat people that illegally park in handicap spots or loading zones, or model other rowdy behavior such as sideshows.
It’s unclear if Bay Street has any plans to reinstall physical parking gates or ask the council to approve mail-in tickets again in the future.
Blake Irwin, a spokesperson for Bay Street Emeryville, did not address the issue of when or how the parking system might be corrected. In a statement to this newspaper, she said the new system was launched last year “with the goal of elevating the accessibility for our guests,” and that “our primary focus remains on ensuring a positive experience for all who visit Bay Street Emeryville.”
Yet several Emeryville elected officials were primarily hung up on the fact that the mall’s operators didn’t ask for permission or guidance before making any changes.
Councilmember Sukhdeep Kaur, who was appointed in February after former Councilmember Ally Medina’s resignation, faulted CenterCal’s failure to bring the ordinance to their attention before they changed their onsite parking system. She said keeping the gates and previous procedures in place would have been more convenient for the entire community, especially since she’d never personally seen any issues with car queuing as a frequent Bay Street shopper.
“What is happening now is post-facto,” Kaur said. “They want to enforce this because they have made these changes, and now they want the city to follow what is convenient for them, not what is convenient or has been convenient for the city — which I think is not very customer-driven. If you want to collect that, put the gates or whatever was in place back.”