Parking Public: a Tour of Parking Lots and Utopias : Downtown LA, South Spring Street

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The Travel Office's Parking Public tour of downtown was based out of a storefront on South Spring Street, in Gallery 727. Operating from July 14-16, the Travel Office held two walking tours each day, looking at the specific history and present of parking on historic Spring Street.

DISINVESTMENT

South Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles was once known as the "Wall Street of the West" due to the high concentration of financial institutions that operated there. Bank of America had its office headquarters near the corner of 6th and Spring until moving to Bunker Hill in 1972. Next door was the Pacific Stock Exchange, the last major financial institution to leave the area. Although little has changed architecturally on South Spring since the 1960s, the area has seen major changes in just about every other way.

LOTS OF LOTS

Although parking lots were uncommon before WWII, downtown is now loaded with on and off street parking. It's now easy to park downtown, at least for a price, but before the war was a different story, as the city's preferred method of transit was the streetcar. For a very brief period in 1920, the city even instituted a ban on parking cars downtown.
The largest operator of parking services in the Downtown area is by far Joe's Auto Parks. With connections to Five Star Parking and L & R Investments, Joe's is part of a large conglomeration of parking service companies that manage open lots, garages, and valet services around the country. Of the estimated 100,000 parking spaces downtown, Joe's operates over 10 percent of them. Currently, parking lot managers, like Joe's are finding offers from condo and loft developers looking more attractive.