Zoo garage passes first step

The entrance to the proposed garage would be at this existing gate in a small parking lot behind the Botanical Building.

The Balboa Park Committee approved the San Diego Zoo's proposed 650-space parking garage plan Thursday, sending it on to the Park and Recreation Board next month.

"I think it's a great project," said member Michael Singleton, a landscape architect.

The approval was not for the six-story garage itself -- which will be used by zoo employees -- but for the access plan along Old Globe Way just north of the Casa del Prado, Botanical Building and San Diego Museum of Art. The garage design is expected to be ready in the spring and only has to meet city building code requirements.

The zoo has long sought ways to relocate its employee cars out of the 2,700-space Park Boulevard surface lot that is full on many weekends and summer days.

This current schedule calls for completing grading and Old Globe Way improvements midway through the 2015 centennial celebration of the park's Panama-California Exposition. The garage would then be built by the time the zoo celebrates its own centennial in 2016.

Zoo employees, starting about 6 a.m., would access the garage from Old Globe Way at about the rate of 180 per hour and then trickle out of the garage in the afternoon. Traffic studies indicate no significant increase in congestion, even on busy summer days.

Committee member Don Liddell cast the only no vote, saying he was concerned about the noise that cars entering and exiting the garage might make, especially during performances at the Old Globe's outdoor theater.

"I don't know what the sound studies say -- sorry," he said.

Chairman David Kinney said the committee technically does not have the authority to approve the garage, because it lies within the zoo's leasehold. But he had the committee add to its resolution a call for high-quality architectural design of the building, close collaboration with the Globe and other park institutions in the garage's operational details and a look at the garage design as it progresses.

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Zoo garage passes first step