The city of San Clemente in Southern California has hired a parking consultant (Walker) to review its downtown CBD parking situation and make suggestions. Residents and Merchants are complaining about not enough on street parking. I'm sure Walker will do a good job, but I will make some suggestions.
I have never been to downtown San Clemente so I checked the aerial view on Google and found that the shops in the 200 block of their main drag where most of the problems are focused have 13 parking areas in the rear of the stores. Each has 15 to 20 spaces and when the picture was shot, there were a lot of empty spots.
OK this is far too simplistic, however my guess is that those stores use those lots for their own customers and employees. I wonder what would happen if they found some parking on the edge of town for employees and put a shuttle in place to take them back and forth to work. Then I would suggest merchants set up "Parking alleys" in their stores to let people go through their stores and access the parking in the rear.
I would also suggest that a "on street valet" system be set up so people, if they liked, could valet park their cars. It seems that most of the complaints come from restaurants so the valet solution would be right up their alley.
Experience shows that a lot of parking can be found just a few steps off the main street. That bank that has shortened hours, the real estate firm that doesn't need all the parking and the like. The study may show that there are always spaces open in these lots; the question is how to make them available to customers of other stores.
Usually a deal can be cut between a valet operation and local merchants. They will rent the spaces and pay a fee to the land owner to use some of their unused parking. It may take a bit of creative negotiation, but I can't believe there is a land owner out there that wouldn't want to make a few bucks filling those empty spots.
Oh, if you want to take a look – see if you can make out Avenida del Mar in the map here. The 200 block, where the major concerns are, is the area with the Chicago Style Pizzeria.
