My family and I recently cleaned out a pair of garages in the process of moving into a new home, just a few blocks from our former home. What really struck me about this was that we didn’t just organize our possessions: we also created enough room for three cars to park off the curb. Both these homes lie within the city’s designated parking impacted area, an area made up largely of neighborhoods developed between the First and Second World Wars, before the automobile dominated the imaginations of urban planners. Homes in this area were typically developed with a single-car garage; it was normal to provide just one parking stall for every two units in apartment buildings.
For about a year, we had been storing about half our furniture, our winter clothing, and my book collection in our former home’s garage, while our housemates (which is another story) had packed away most of their possessions in the garage of our home-to-be. For this entire period I parked my car at work, my wife parked her car in the driveway, and our housemates largely parallel-parked their car on the street, blocking our driveway at night. Now that we’ve moved to our new home, which is quite close to my office, I continue to park at work, while my wife’s car is parked in our new garage and our housemates can park their car in the driveway.
The effort to clean out both of these garages was considerable: it required a combination of weekly trash pick-ups, trips to Conservation Corps recycling drop-off, multiple donations to Out of the Closet, and a fruitful garage sale. But what came out of this effort was garage parking for three cars: two spaces at our former home, and one space at our new home. Both our former and new neighbors probably noticed some relief when attempting to park on the street.
This simple fact sparked my imagination. Walking though my old neighborhood as well as my new one, I see garage after garage used not for automobiles, but to store “stuff.” It is true that some garages in this area of Long Beach have been illegally converted into additional residential units, but it seems that even more have become make-shift storage lockers. What if all this garage space were cleared so that it could actually be used for cars? If there could be a citywide spring cleaning of our collective garages, a significant amount of secured parking would become available. The city government would not have to negotiate shared-use agreements with business owners for their parking lots; new parking structures would not need to be built; fresh asphalt would not need to be poured. For Long Beach to embark on such a massive garage cleanout, we would need a concerted effort by a number of non-profit organizations, community groups, and city departments. The goal would be to organize a citywide spring cleaning activity that could be seen as a fun weekend event rather than a chore.
We already have several nonprofit organizations operating thrift stores in Long Beach, including Goodwill, the Salvation Army, and Out of the Closet. Donations to these organizations are tax-deductible, fueling an influx of giving in the weeks before we file our income taxes in April. If we organized a citywide event, these organizations could temporarily expand their operating hours, and also set up temporary donation sites throughout the city. The Long Beach chapter of the Conservation Corps maintains recycling drop-off locations in the city. For a special weekend citywide event, they could augment their primary locations with satellite sites.
The city’s Environmental Services Bureau does not maintain a permanent collection site for electronic and hazardous waste, Long Beach residents must nomally rely upon the County of Los Angeles collection site in San Pedro. However, there is a quarterly electronic and hazardous waste drop-off held outside Veterans Stadium (at Clark Avenue and Carson Street); this could be timed to coincide with a citywide cleaning event, and perhaps even expanded to multiple locations. The Long Beach Neighborhood Services Bureau provides dumpsters when neighborhood associations request them, so that residents can dispose of large items not normally removed by weekly refuse collection. Scheduling a number of these dumpsters throughout the city for the weekend of a special cleanup event should not present logistical difficulties.
The highlight of this massive garage-cleaning event could be a citywide garage sale. Were involvement high enough, this event could even constitute a destination for persons across the L.A. region. The city could promote participation by providing a permit-free weekend for garage sales (as it stands, garage sales do in fact require a permit, though the law is rarely enforced). Neighborhood groups could combine the garage sales throughout their community so that they act as an annual fundraising event for the neighborhood. There could even be locations for consolidated garage sales: imagine a mega-garage sale encompassing the entire convention center parking lot.
If properly linked together, these kinds of efforts could make a dramatic difference for parking-impacted neighborhoods in Long Beach. If even a percentage of garages presently used for storage were cleared out sufficiently to be used as originally intended, curbside parking would become far more practical and effective. An annual event like this could also benefit nonprofit organizations and community groups, through donations and revenues from garage sales. Hazardous and electronic waste could be disposed of properly. Removing some of the “stuff” from our collective garage could even constitute a regional draw for visitors—a real citywide event, rather than part of some weekend’s “honey-do” list.
