Encinitas eyes two sites for downtown parking
ENCINITAS — When the San Dieguito Heritage Museum vacates the old gas station
on Vulcan Avenue sometime this spring, the dilapidated building should be removed
to make way for parking, city officials said Monday.

ENCINITAS — When the San Dieguito Heritage Museum vacates the old gas station on Vulcan Avenue sometime this spring, the dilapidated building should be removed to make way for parking, city officials said Monday.

A second suggestion calls for building a parking structure on a North County Transit District lot between D and E streets, west of the museum and Vulcan.

In Encinitas, where merchants have for years identified parking as a top concern, talk of the parking facilities surfaced during City Council goal-setting sessions earlier this month.

“With regards to the little gas station, we need to look at it, for sure,” said Councilman Jerome Stocks. “The idea of knocking down that building and striping the area for parking would be an inexpensive way of gaining a number of parking spaces that would be very useful for the public.”

The nonprofit heritage museum leases the old gas station from the city. Beneath the canopy are wagon wheels with wooden spokes and a display of rustic, picket fencing. Much of the building’s steel exterior is clad with plywood whose white paint is peeling.

Earlier this month, museum officials celebrated the arrival of prefabricated buildings at the museum’s new location, across town on Quail Gardens Drive. The museum’s annual deep-pit barbecue is scheduled for May 19, and by then the museum and its collection should be cleared out of the old gas station, architect Jerry Stephen said Monday.

Stephen, who sits on the museum’s board of directors, said no one from the city has contacted the museum formally about a parking lot plan or with any request to vacate the property by a certain date.

“We really appreciate how the city has not even made it an issue,” he said.

Stephen said he did not know the gas station’s vintage, but thought it could date to the 1930s. He said the station is a prefabricated post-and-beam building whose roof is now very leaky.

A parking lot at the gas station site would require an engineering department estimate of what it would cost to remove the building and create a parking layout, City Manager Phil Cotton said Monday.

“We will work something up,” Cotton said, referring to the need to produce a site plan. “Every parking space is worth it to us.”

North County Transit District feels the same way, said Stocks, the Encinitas representative to the district’s board of directors. The agency owns and operates the railroad and commuter station along Vulcan.

In 2002, the agency opened Lot A, a $275,000, 79-space parking lot west of the railroad, between D and E streets. Finding an empty space can be tough, however, and a parking garage would be convenient for Coaster riders and visitors to the city’s downtown district, Stocks said.

“The transit district would be open to that conversation,” Stocks said. “The transit district is always interested in improving parking at the transit sites because it improves the opportunities for people to use mass transit instead of their private cars.”

Stocks noted that the structure would occupy a low spot and would not threaten views.

Stocks said he met privately with transit district executive director Karen King on Monday.

“I told her that in (the City Council’s) goal-setting, the parking structure was discussed,” Stocks said. “She received that news very well. Now it’s a matter of finding the money.”