Santa Clara needs to bolster its city budget — and public parking fees could be on the menu. Small businesses aren’t on board and worry customer traffic could drop because they won’t want to pay.
Although the proposed 2025-26 city budget anticipates a $9.3 million surplus, the following five years are projecting red ink. To bridge the gap, the city is hiring a consultant to study charging for parking at city-owned lots, including the Santa Clara Convention Center and Franklin Square mall, the latter of which is part of the city’s historic downtown and home to more than a dozen small businesses.
District 5 Councilmember Suds Jain, whose area includes Franklin Square and the city’s downtown, said he supports the study. He’s focused on stabilizing the budget and wants city services to be more self-sustaining.
“When I came to City Council, we had a budget deficit, and of course, given that it was COVID, we had run down our reserve from 25% to 15%,” Jain told San José Spotlight. “I’ve been very, very fiscally conservative.”
City officials raised various costs to patch the budget, such as charging sports groups to use fields and increasing business taxes. Voters passed a $400 million infrastructure bond last year to help support the city’s crumbling facilities, including the George F. Haines International Swim Center.
Craig Mobeck, director of public works, said the mall’s property owners and the city are part of a maintenance district encompassing Franklin Square, through which the city pays for maintenance and operations in both places where it’s considering installing paid parking.
He said the mall’s property owners contribute a capped amount of $14,200 annually toward maintenance. Meanwhile, the city spends about $140,000 on landscaping, tree trimming and other maintenance work — and costs are going up.
“Council discussed paid parking as an opportunity to help recover costs,” Mobeck told San José Spotlight.
He said the city wants to hire a consultant this summer to study the paid parking proposal. The study’s findings will be shared publicly to help councilmembers decide if the project should move forward.
While the city spends thousands of dollars to maintain Franklin Square, Jain said his focus is on the convention center. The city’s budget for 2025-26 allocates about $940,000 to maintain the convention center’s common grounds and parking lots. Jain said charging for parking can help offset those costs.
“My priority is at the convention center, because I think we can make quite a bit of money,” Jain told San José Spotlight. “It’s just like the (International Swim Center), where we never set aside any money to rebuild it.”
Other local shopping centers have switched from free to a fee in recent years. In 2022, Westfield Valley Fair began charging shoppers $1 per hour after the first two hours with a $10 daily maximum. Santana Row started charging for parking last year at $2 per hour after the first two hours with a $10 daily maximum.
John McGrew, owner and manager of the Mio Vicino Italian restaurant, said it makes more sense to charge for parking at the convention center or larger shopping centers.
“We’re not Valley Fair, we’re not a large strip mall, we’re just Franklin Square,” McGrew told San José Spotlight.
McGrew has worked at Mio Vicino for more than 30 years and grew up across the street from Franklin Square. He said most of the Franklin Square businesses are locally owned — which is why residents enjoy supporting them. But paid parking could deter the support.
“Maybe for someone like us, it won’t have a large impact, but some of these other places, (customers say) maybe I’m not gonna go to Franklin Square,” McGrew told San José Spotlight.
Jim Silva, owner of Big Jim’s Barber Shop in the mall, said business has been slow since the pandemic. He’s worried paid parking could make it worse.
“We’re still recuperating from COVID, we’re just trying to come up again,” Silva told San José Spotlight. “Who’s going to benefit (from paid parking)? Not us.”
Contact B. Sakura Cannestra at [email protected] or @SakuCannestra on X.
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