Tucked in behind the Silberstein Building, the elegant white edifice on Broadway across from the city plaza, is this tranquil courtyard, as serene as it is sterile, missing only humanity to give it character.

It's a shame, really, that this lovely, shaded refuge is so underultilized. It is not inaccessible, although the wrought-iron fence surrounding it tends to discourage casual visitors. This is one of the hidden gems of downtown Chico.

It is, ironically, less than half a block from Diamond Alley. It is in the same longitude, blocked by the ATM plaza behind the Bank of America, buttressed by a dumpster soffet, but otherwise an aesthetic extension of the Diamond Alley. Shaded, intimate, pristine.

It might have been a parking lot at one time. At the end of the drive fronting onto Fifth Street is a course of stylized hitching posts, with chess-piece knight horse heads atop black iron standards. So it's entirely possible that in the past, this was intended to serve as a preautomotive loading dock.

Regardless, it now serves as a quiet, dappled respite. The problem is, it's never used.

How many more of these getaways could we have in downtown, if only we recovered private parking lots? The truth is that there are acres of asphalt that could be coverted into pedestrian space.

Whenever we try to have a discussion about parking in the downtown, we hear the familiar complaint; "We don't need any new parking. There's plenty of parking in the downtown." I'm prepared to concede that argument, subject to two stipulations; it's in the wrong places, and it's in the wrong hands.

When the charrette folks came to town, they made a point of noting that there were over 4000 parking spaces in the city center. About half of which were in private parking lots. Then they made the point that parking utilization was significantly less than 85%, the magic number they recommend as the benchmark for new construction. The problem is that a great deal of the vacancy they note is in those private lots. Meantime, potential patrons of downtown businesses circle the blocks cursing the lack of parking. Thus is cognitive dissonance engendered.

One suggestion from the charrette is to negotiate with private lot owners to make space available for casual use. This is a sweet, noble, and largely impossible notion. Liability issues make it highly unlikely that owners of private lots will permit non-subscribers to park there.

It must also be noted that parking lot rentals are probably not that lucrative. It is one of the reasons there are no significant parking operations in downtown Chico. The main reason these spaces are offered to subscription is that it doesn't pencil to build on those lots, and they might as well generate something to cover the property taxes. But it isn't a business in any sustainable sense of the word. I imagine most of these "parklords" would prefer not to deal with the rental headaches at all. Especially inasmuch as most of these lots are largely unoccupied.

The solution as I see it is to encourage these landowners to divest of their profitless and troublesome parcels. If the city were to acquire these partial parcels and improve them by ripping up the concrete, planting lawns and ground covers, trees and shrubs, ivies and espaliers, it could create oases of green glades that would be catnip to the retail patron.

More on Friday.