The East Sacramento Trader Joe's parking lot is locally infamous. Dozens of comments on social media complain that there are inadequate parking spaces to keep up with the demand of the only store within city limits.
Sacramento resident Sue Kim has given up on parking at Trader Joe's. She pulls into the neighboring lot for the Ace Hardware next door.
“Of course I feel guilty, because they have a sign that says, ‘No Trader Joe’s parking anytime,’” Kim said. “I’m really sorry to Ace.”
"No Trader Joe’s parking signs" on display Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024, along the fence of Ace Hardware’s parking lot in the neighboring strip mall at 5030 Folsom Blvd.
Earlier this year, a small overflow parking area opened up right next door to Trader Joe’s, at the site of the former Burr’s Fountain ice cream shop. For six months, shoppers were able to park in either lot, giving most a better chance at finding parking.
But in August, the overflow lot closed as unceremoniously as it arrived.
Madison Long said her early-October Thursday morning visit was unusual because it was the first time she was able to immediately get a parking spot.
“My husband and I came once and he had to drop me off because there was literally nowhere to park,” she recounted. “He just dropped me off while I came inside and shopped, and then he actually ended up just going down that alleyway, turning around and waiting for me to finish because it wasn’t even worth it to try to find a spot.”
Dharla Torres said she wasn’t aware of the other parking lot, but she noticed that finding parking on weekends was easier for a while.
“Now we have to come during the week when there’s a lot less people grocery shopping, like on a Thursday,” the 29-year-old said. “I don’t know that there’s anything that can be done because they’re locked in this pretty small spot. Unless they physically move Trader Joe’s, I don’t think that, for now, there’s much that can be done.”
When asked why the overflow lot was closed, some employees suggested the grocery store elected to terminate the lease because of high rent costs. Others said the overflow lot property owner, Ridge Capital, decided to stop renting it out to them.
Roughly 30 parking spots sit empty Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024, in the old Burr’s Fountain parking lot.
Ridge Capital Principal Michael Diepenbrock, however, confirmed in an email that Trader Joe’s canceled the lease “much to [their] disappointment.”
When asked why Trader Joe’s didn’t renew the lease, the supermarket chain’s Public Relations Manager Nakia Rohde directed CapRadio to an Inside Trader Joe’s podcast explaining why parking is limited at all of their stores.
So, why is Trader Joe’s parking so bad?
Tara Miller and Matt Sloan, hosts of the podcast, explained that the issue can be traced back to the first Trader Joe’s location in Pasadena. That location, like many others, is small compared to regular grocery stores, which means they have fewer allocated parking spaces.
“You don’t really want to just have a big empty lot, even if that empty lot might be filled up with cars from customers visiting the business there,” Sloan said in the podcast. “It’s a really interesting and tricky balancing act. What is required as compared to what is allowed from city planning perspectives, as it relates to the number of parking spaces granted.”
Miller noted that making Trader Joe’s stores bigger would change the identity of the 57-year-old business.
“We have small stores, so they come with small parking lots,” she emphasized. “If we had bigger stores, sure we’d have bigger parking lots, but we’d feel like a different store.”
She added that although they get accused of opening stores “with the world’s most ridiculous parking lot on purpose,” that’s not their intention.
“We try to get as much parking as possible,” she emphasized. “In some municipalities, we can’t get any parking at all. We do have a number of stores throughout the country that don’t have any parking.”
The facts
According to Sacramento City Planner Karlo Felix, the East Sac Trader Joe’s was built in 2003. At the time, the 15,500-square-foot store was required to provide a minimum of 62 spaces. It provided 63.
But Felix said that was under different parking regulations that the city no longer follows. In April, the city adopted its 2040 General Plan, which includes a policy that eliminates minimum vehicle parking requirements citywide.
“So in effect, under today’s requirements, there is no longer a minimum vehicle parking requirement,” he stated. “We understand that we may not have a super robust public transportation system, so we do acknowledge that there’s going to be a need for some on-site parking.”
He argued that the city needs to “start somewhere” and that it couldn’t wait “for everything to be perfectly lined up” regarding public transportation and “people’s willingness to use active forms of transportation.”
The city proposed a Folsom Boulevard Safety Improvements Project which aims to make the stretch of road between 48th and 65th streets — where Trader Joe’s is located — safer for cyclists. The report noted that an average of roughly 18,000 cars travel along Folsom Boulevard daily and that it lacks continuous or present bike lanes.
This project would implement bike lanes from 48th Street to 65th Street and adjust on-street parking from 48th Street to 53rd Street.
“Situated on the city’s Vision Zero High Injury Network, which focuses on areas with the highest number of crashes resulting in severe injuries and fatalities, this project addresses critical safety concerns,” the report stated. “This approach aims to mitigate traffic speed and allocate space for bike lanes and a center turn lane.”
The project is currently in the preliminary design phase and is slated for construction advertisement in fall 2025. The city has not published an estimate of when the project will be completed.
Customer feedback
Andrew Galloway said he’s been visiting the Folsom Boulevard location for the last 10 years.
The 41-year-old, who drove to the store during an early October visit, said he typically bikes the roughly 10 blocks from his house to get his groceries and argued that others should too.
“If more people were taking their utility bikes or just walking down here, that would be so much better than all of these single-use cars badly parked,” he said.
Trader Joe’s customer Andrew Galloway, 41, stands next to the Trader Joe’s parking lot Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024, in Sacramento.
He argued that adding parking spaces won’t solve the problem because it will create “induced demand” that will eventually make the parking situation just as bad, if not worse.
“It’s just like highways,” he said. “You can add lanes, but the people just drive more and then you have to build another lane 10 years later.”
Madison long argued that biking to the grocery store doesn’t make sense for anyone who isn’t single and doesn’t live nearby.
“If I wanted more than a basket’s worth of stuff, that wouldn’t be feasible,” she said. “And I don’t live close enough to bike here.”
What now?
There are a few solutions that could help alleviate parking woes at this Folsom Boulevard parking lot. The first is a solution city planner Felix presented: Sharing parking with other businesses like CVS or ACE Hardware. He said “there’s no prohibition against [shared parking]” and that the city encourages it.
“We would rather see people share their vehicular parking facilities than create large parking lots or tear down structures,” Felix added.
There is little the city is able or willing to do when it comes to addressing traffic issues created by the parking lot. Jennifer Singer, associate media and communications manager for the city, told CapRadio the only thing they could do is send police officers to address traffic violations that are occurring.
But while the city works on making Folsom Boulevard safer for cyclists, anyone interested in biking to the grocery store can avoid the road altogether by taking M Street, a popular bike route for Sac State students commuting from downtown or Midtown, instead. A full map of Sacramento’s bikeways can be found on the city’s website.
Trader Joe’s has several parking spaces for bikes available on-site that, according to staff, are rarely ever fully in use.
A bike rack located at the front of Trader Joe’s Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024, in East Sacramento.
Some staff also suggested shopping early during the week for a better chance of getting parking and to avoid crowds.
Trader Joe’s is experimenting with opening smaller-format convenience stores called Pronto. The first and only one of these stores opened earlier this year in New York City and is roughly 2,800 square feet — roughly a fifth the size of a traditional Trader Joe’s store.
Galloway, who used to work at Trader Joe’s, argued that opening one of these locations in Midtown might help minimize demand at the East Sacramento location.
“That would be a way of them diversifying their footprint too, and maybe finding out a new way of engaging customers who otherwise pass right by the parking lot or have to time their trips to go a different time,” he said.
However, Rohde, the Trader Joe’s public relations manager, told CSP Daily News in March that the company does not have plans to open additional Pronto markets in New York “or elsewhere in the country.”
Ridge Capital Principal Michael Diepenbrock has declined several requests for an interview. He told CapRadio that his company was “sorry to lose them and hope they reconsider.”
“In the meantime, we are meeting with several other possible tenants,” he added.
Unless an agreement is reached between Ridge Capital and Trader Joe’s, the lot will continue to sit empty and blocked off by chains that read “no parking” while customers continue the struggle to find parking.
