Report offers city, developers strategies to reduce parking downtown

A new report from public policy and real estate leaders in Austin recommends a variety of approaches the city can take to reduce the presence and impact of multilevel parking decks in new developments in the downtown core and beyond.

The recently released technical assistance panel report from Urban Land Institute Austin was an attempt by local leaders to “solve” the parking issue that is seen as an obstacle to quality of life downtown. With new towers and high-rises frequently including several-level parking podiums, the report sees those structures as taking away from ground-level activation and adding to projects’ costs because parking spaces detract from the amount of commercial or residential space that can be offered.

One notable policy change supported in the report includes creating a “soft cap” system to limit parking, with fees instituted on the parking spaces in excess of limits, which would likely be recalibrated periodically.

The report also calls for modifying the floor area ratio (FAR) formula used by the city to include structured parking located above ground, with the FAR offered by right recalibrated in line with other policies and recommendations.

Other tactics suggested include decoupling parking from commercial and residential assets, establishing partnerships among property owners to encourage sharing of existing parking structures, increasing fees for on-street parking and prioritizing on-street spaces for uses other than low-occupancy vehicles.

The report was the focus of ULI’s monthly breakfast panel discussion, which brought staff from the offices of City Council members Zo Qadri and Natasha Harper-Madison into the conversation about how the city should address parking in addition to other development pressures. In January, City Council voted to eliminate minimum parking requirements on new developments, a move that follows development trends in other major cities.

Melissa Beeler, senior policy adviser in Qadri’s District 9 office, said initiatives to increase pedestrian safety and comfort across the city while increasing transit options need to accompany policy changes aimed at reducing parking spaces.

“What we’re focused on right now is doing more with staff, along with outside staff to address parking, especially along the Project Connect corridor. We’re really happy to see staff return with what they can do in terms of unbundling parking. They’re really working very closely with the development community to get that right,” Beeler told the Austin Monitor. “We’re working with stakeholders on moving forward the more comprehensive approach to the downtown density bonus program that really needs to be updated. That’s the opportunity for us to really boost entitlements while also addressing the trade-off of parking by including it with FAR, counting it towards FAR.”

John Lawler, policy strategist in the District 1 office, said Harper-Madison has approached parking reforms with the view that those who travel to work downtown via car shouldn’t be negatively impacted while addressing the needs of downtown residents and businesses.

“She wanted to make sure that that vote (eliminating parking requirements) actually had reform in mind. … Simply eliminating parking minimums, from everything we could hear from folks, was not enough to actually reduce the amount of parking podiums, the parking structures that too often are not utilized to their full extent,” he said. “There are a dozen other (policies) that go and that delve not just into parking policy, but also housing policy. It digs into the parks policy, tree shade, it digs in how well we build pedestrian, bicycle infrastructure. And then it opens the door to some other new policy concepts, such as soft caps for parking downtown where we’d be incentivizing a new development to think creatively about how much parking they do or do not need, and to try to find other uses for that space.”

Photo made available through a Creative Commons license.

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