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BACKGROUND The FY 2017/18 Capital Improvement Program included CIP No. 17448 to expand and improve the existing parking lot in the downtown transportation corridor between Bernal Avenue and Abbie Street. The stated goal of the project in the CIP budget book was to create an additional 70 to 80 parking spaces for visitors to the downtown area. On February 6, 2018, City Council approved a professional services agreement for a not-to- exceed amount of $197,000 with HMH to provide the engineering and design services necessary to prepare biddable plans and specifications for the project. On June 18, 2019, City Council was presented with the design work on the parking improvements as they had progressed. The plans were approximately 65 percent complete. The presentation showed that the expanded parking lot area would increase the number of parking spaces from 59 to a total of 140 spaces, or an increase of 81 parking spaces. As part of the presentation, City Council was also shown how achieving the goal of increasing the number of parking spaces consistent with the project as described in the CIP was very challenging due to the width of the corridor right-of-way, the grade differential across the width of the right-of-way, and the need to "tie" the proposed improvements to the elevation of adjacent properties. A specific concern was the constraints which caused bicycle and pedestrian trail "pinch points" where the trail narrowed to a less than desirable 8-foot width. City Council directed staff to revisit the design to increase the width of the concrete trail as much as possible, with the goal of a 10-foot width with 2-foot buffers on both sides (as is the preferred minimum trail cross section as described in the Bicycle Pedestrian Master Plan). The direction from Council included that when re-designing, staff should consider removal of some of the proposed aesthetic design features first, such as the column relief on the retaining wall on which the lights standards were to be constructed, and/or reduction of space being allocated to landscaping, although the landscaping areas helped to achieve the goal of meeting the elevations of the private property improvements along the length of the corridor. To meet the trail width goal of 10 feet, City Council also indicated that the number of new parking spaces could be reduced by 10 percent (8 spaces) if necessary. Staff understood that a reduction in parking spaces was to be a "last resort" alternative. DISCUSSION Staff and HMH have been working on alternatives since the City Council meeting on June 18, 2019. The wall relief has been removed. The light standards have been relocated to be off-center from the top of the wall with their concrete footings encroaching into the parking lot. The concrete footings have been rotated 45 degrees to minimize their interference with the usable parking stall width and length. The retaining wall itself can also be designed to gain a few inches of width for the trail. In addition, the work has also involved meeting with the property and business owners adjacent to the corridor on the west side to review options for matching the elevation of the corridor with their varied property elevation differentials. These discussions have been successful in allowing some grading and edge landscaping to occur on the adjacent private properties, but these improvements will require right-of-entry agreements to perform the construction work, and easements for ongoing landscape maintenance. Page 2 of 4