Last night I drove around for a bit over an hour looking for all the valet parking areas I could find. Starting at 9pm, I figure I hit pretty much all of them. In the past I’ve pretty much focused on the 1100 & 1200 blocks of Washington Avenue with Copia and Lucas Park Grille, respectively. Just over a week aga the Department of Streets set up new valet guidelines which includes the establishment of designated valet zones, they started with Copia & Lucas Park Grille. These keep the valets within a certain boundary but also alert motorists where they cannot park after a certain time.
Keep in mind the intent of the valet zones is to provide an on-street space for customers to drop off or pick up their cars — it is not intended to provide any sort of “VIP” parking for really nice cars. Here were my findings last night.
Restaurants w/valet zones:
- Lucas Park Grille, 12?? Washington, a Range Rover was parked within the no-parking valet zone. Keep in mind they have an 88ft long zone which by many accounts is too long. If they can keep a Range Rover parked there then they don’t need the space.
- Copia, 1122 Washington, a Maserati and Mercedes were parked within the no-parking valet zone. The Mercedes was parked in a designated no-parking area blocking fire access to stand pipe for an adjacent building — the fire marshall needs to keep a closer eye on them. Copia’s zone is an amazingly long 129ft so it is no wonder they feel they can park two cars within that
- The Loft, Olive east of Compton, no problems to report. Zone is a very reasonable three spaces long, all were empty around 9:45pm.
Restaurants w/o valet zones:
- Eleven-Eleven Mississippi, 1111 Mississippi, large amount of space, cones in street reserving spaces.
- Pepper Lounge, 2005 Locust, cones reserving large number of spaces on both sides of street.
- Kyo, 14xx Washington Ave, cones in front of business,
- Dolce, Broadway @ Olive, massive quantity of spaces reserved on both sides of Broadway, charging $5. Midwest Valet.
- Tony’s, Market St, block-long no-parking zone in front of restaurant was full of cars presumably parked by valets. Should be designated as parking with time slot for valet service like all other establishments or cars should be ticketed or towed from no-parking zone. Tony’s should not receive any special treatment simply because they are Tony’s.
- Ten14, 1014 Locust, cones on both sides of street.
- Harry’s, cones on both sides of street creating lanes with cones and signs.
- Dante’s, Olive west of Compton, cones reserving spaces on both sides of club, Midwest Valet sign placed within marked bike lane.
- Mandrin, Maryland Plaza, a few cones out but using limited space not yet marked as valet zone.
- Bar-Italia, Maryland, cones reserving quite a few spaces.
- Sub-Zero, Euclid, four spaces taken.
- Restaurants on Laclede @ Euclid. Valet sign out, two cars parked on Laclede at narrow area.
I have no idea how many of the above actually posses a valid permit. If they do they will, at some point soon, be forced to comply with the new valet regulations and be limited to a still genereous valet zone. Those operating on the streets without permits will become more and more obvious to everyone as the will be the places lacking a designated zone.
In the past I’ve seen on-street valet service at a few other restaurants but none were observed last night. If you can think of additional locations where valets routinely operate let me know using the comments below. I will keep an eye on them and make sure they are all known to the Department of Streets – I’m just thinking they don’t have the staff to drive around at 9pm on a Saturday night.
Dante’s on Olive just west of Compton:
![IMG_0572.jpg](http://farm1.static.flickr.com/173/364580652_4d6748ae7b.jpg)
The actual club is up where the cars are parked. These three spaces plus about that many on the other side of their club are being reserved for those willing to shell out $5 to park at public parking spot after you are no longer required to feed the meter. Note the bike lane to the left of the image above.
![IMG_0573.jpg](http://farm1.static.flickr.com/98/364580748_ce7579fdaa.jpg)
Midwest Valet has placed their sign within the bike lane, a complete disregard for the safety of others. In more urban minded cities this sort of abuse of bike lanes would not be tolerated.
Harry’s on 22nd at Market Street:
![IMG_0567.jpg](http://farm1.static.flickr.com/110/364580235_10826c5d15.jpg)
Here they are using public parking spaces across the street from their restaurant to establish a valet lane. This place creates an interesting delima in that most customers will arrive off Market Street (behind me) and their parking lot used to park valeted cars off-street is up ahead. So here a valet zone directly in front of their location might present functional problems for both customers and the valet operator. That said, a reasonable solution needs to be worked out as they are taking up way too many public parking spaces but unless someone is visiting the FBI at night (behind fence at right) they literally are the only users of this street.
Dolce at Olive & Broadway (SE corner):
![IMG_0562.jpg](http://farm1.static.flickr.com/188/364579951_bc6b7d90dd.jpg)
Once again Midwest Valet is up to old tricks. Here their sign is actually out of the way along Olive but that is only because Olive is two lanes between Broadway and 4th street to the east. My observations on several occassions has been they use Olive for customers to drop off or pick up their cars. It appears they take the cars to a parking garage and do not use the spaces coned off on Broadway.
![IMG_0559.jpg](http://farm1.static.flickr.com/127/364579685_cc5816c89d.jpg)
Dolce is located at the far corner of the building on the right. They’ve coned off 10 spaces on the east side of Broadway and another 3 on the west side (visible at left above). The balance of the west side is no parking in front of the Metropolitan Square building.
![IMG_0557.jpg](http://farm1.static.flickr.com/124/364579507_189245df3c.jpg)
This shot gives you a good overview of how empty the area looks, a false impression. Again, I think they park cars in a garage and simply cone off all these spaces so customers will be forced to use the valet service. If customers self-parked, how would they make any money? Again, these are public spaces and someone visiting a friend at a nearby hotel might wish to park there or perhaps going to see friends in the newly opened loft building seen in the background.
It is pretty clear these valet companies, especially Midwest Valet, will continue to abusively take spaces away from the general public until they are forced not to. I’m just glad the Department of Streets if finally taking charge of the problem.