Fayetteville Planning Commission votes to end parking regulations

Business owners would no longer have to provide a minimum number of spaces

The parking lot at Steele Crossing is mostly empty Sunday. Fayetteville planning commissioners on Monday reviewed a proposal to remove the city’s minimum parking standards for all commercial properties. For more photos, go to www.nwadg.com/photos.
The parking lot at Steele Crossing is mostly empty Sunday. Fayetteville planning commissioners on Monday reviewed a proposal to remove the city’s minimum parking standards for all commercial properties. For more photos, go to www.nwadg.com/photos.

FAYETTEVILLE -- Business owners will no longer be required to provide a set number of parking spaces for their customers if a proposal from the Fayetteville Planning Division clears the City Council in the coming weeks.

Planning commissioners on Monday recommended completely doing away with minimum parking standards for all nonresidential properties.

Fayetteville Planning Commission

In other business Monday, planning commissioners:

• Approved plans for a new Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant, southeast of Joyce and Steele Boulevards on undeveloped land next to Taziki’s Mediterranean Cafe and the Malco Razorback Cinema parking lot.

• Approved a conditional-use permit allowing more parking spaces than usual at the Buffalo Wild Wings site.

• Approved a conditional-use permit at 2183 N. College Ave., behind King Burrito, where a nightclub called the Blue Ocean Lounge is planned.

• Recommended a change to city code, whereby owners of bed and breakfast facilities would no longer be required to renew their conditional-use permit each year.

Source: Staff report

The proposal represents a radical change to how commercial parking has been handled in Fayetteville for decades.

"The intent is to encourage infill on some of the more difficult lots along commercial corridors and in our downtown areas," Quin Thompson, a city planner, said at Monday's meeting.

"Several times each year, planning staff denies a business license or has to discourage a prospective business owner from moving into an existing building because the location cannot meet the minimum parking requirements," Thompson added in a staff memo.

He said the current standards can be especially troublesome when a property changes uses -- from an office to a retail or restaurant setting, for example.

Doing away with the minimum standards could also prevent vast parking lots that rarely fill up from being built.

City Planning Director Andrew Garner said Monday current standards were developed to meet parking demand when businesses are the busiest.

Commissioner Tracy Hoskins said he thinks that's the wrong approach.

"Designing parking lots for the day after Thanksgiving ... is probably a bad idea," Hoskins said July 13 when the proposal was first discussed.

Multiple commissioners said removing minimum parking standards might encourage people to walk or bike to where they're going as well.

"People actually will self select," Commissioner Matthew Hoffman said Monday. "If you make it harder for them to drive, then they'll walk. If you make it easier for them to drive, they'll drive."

"The most prevalent land use in the city of Fayetteville is not small businesses or large businesses or parks or schools," Hoffman added. "It's actually parking lots."

He and Hoskins commended planning staff for coming up with the proposal.

"This is absolutely one of the best, progressive things that I've seen the staff embark on since I've sat on this commission," Hoskins said. "I've always thought it was crazy to have minimum parking standards for commercial businesses. Let the people that own those businesses, that build those businesses, that invest in those businesses -- let them determine what they need."

Despite the positives commissioners mentioned, the proposal also has potential to lead to developments with little or no available on-site parking.

Tom Brown, the only planning commissioner to vote against the ordinance change Monday, said he feared it would cause problems for adjacent landowners -- especially in areas where commercial parking might spill over into residential properties.

Brown said he agrees with trying to make the city more walkable, bikable and transit oriented.

"But that's going to take a long time to accomplish," he added. "Right now, this ordinance that we have is really our only tool to manage parking."

Brown suggested tweaking existing standards rather than doing away with them entirely.

"If there are situations where a developer can't develop ... I'm all for modifying the parking regulations," he said. "I just think we don't want throw the baby out with the bathwater."

Currently, the city's parking regulations are a hodgepodge of rules depending on how a particular property is used.

For commercial properties, the rules often depend on a business' square footage. For example, restaurants require one parking space for every 100 square feet of gross floor area. A bank must have one space for every 200 square feet. For a home improvement store, it's one space for every 500 square feet.

For other properties, parking depends on rough estimates for how many people will visit a certain type of business. A hospital must have at least one parking space per bed. For a barber shop, it's two parking spaces per chair. At a bowling alley, six parking spaces are required for every lane.

Residential parking requirements would remain unchanged under the Planning Division's proposal. A single-family residence, duplex or triplex still would have to have at least two parking spaces per dwelling unit. Multifamily apartments and townhouses would still require one space per bedroom.

The proposal also doesn't apply to the city's maximum parking requirements for commercial properties. Developers would still be limited in the total number of parking spaces they can build, although waivers can be granted by using alternative storm water techniques, such as bioswales, constructed wetland or pervious pavement, or by planting extra trees above and beyond what city code calls for.

Under existing law, developers can reduce the number of parking spaces they're required to build by installing bike racks, substituting motorcycle or scooter spaces for full-size spots or sharing parking with an adjacent property, provided the two properties have different peak demands -- like a church and a bank. Further reductions are also allowed if a property lies within a quarter-mile of a transit stop.

All of those considerations would go away, however, if minimum parking standards are abolished. The City Council is scheduled to review planning staff's proposal Aug. 18.

NW News on 07/28/2015

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