Walnut Creek Auto Lot

Pretty nice little parking lot right here. Lines are marked with white paint and are spaced to accommodate vehicles of many different makes/models. What's really impressive is that this parking lot doesn't discriminate and openly encourages multiculturalism. I have seen cars from different nations parked right next to each other, coexisting in peaceful harmony.

Paid for two hours and came back to my car being time stamped not even an hour in? How cheap can you be to mess with your parking meters to make it seem like they expired? You’re telling me three people had similar experiences? Obviously not a mistake anymore, this parking lot is cheap and preys on others for their money. They make sure you have no evidence of them being wrong, so you HAVE to pay. Never thought a company could be so penniless that they resort to scamming their customers who willingly pay :P

DO NOT PARK HERE. This parking lot is shady as hell.

Go park at South Locust Garage instead (a multi-level parking garage around the corner, first hour is free, $1.25/hr after) 37.898113106182365, -122.0612022848469 . We saw this garage after we parked at Walnut Creek Auto Lot/ParkSmart Inc already and didn't want to repark. Big mistake.

So back to Walnut Creek Auto Lot/ParkSmart Inc... Our time wasn't supposed to expire until ~4:12pm. Two of us looked at the meter before we left. We parked at this spot: 37.897667, -122.060944. We came back to the car right at 4pm and found a ticket on our windshield. Our meter had magically zeroed out and we got a $35 ticket. We tried contesting it but were denied. This lot is not run by the city. It does not give you a printout with time stamp of when you got there or when it expires. So you have no proof. Payment is by check or money order only. And the address to send payment to... it's a UPS Store mailbox.

Walnut creek needs to audit all these third party parking meters. We wanted to support downtown WC businesses after going to the Ruth Bancroft Garden but never again. This has left a negative feeling associated with downtown Walnut Creek for us.

I'm lodging a complaint with the city of Walnut Creek as well.

They will ticket you if you are 60 seconds late. They wait for it; I even documented that I was 1 minute late by taking a photo of the time on my husbands phone and the ticket in front of the car, and they did not have any leniency. Good thing there is no law requiring you to pay a private parking ticket. It’s not a public street or lot so they have no teeth- they don’t link to city DMV because they are private property. Better off at a city garage. If you get a ticket tho, you need to pay it if you want to park in that lot ever again. Double edged sword bc I’m pretty sure they’ll tow you.

I paid for parking from 2 - 4 and got a ticket timestamped at 3:50.