CREJ - Office Properties Quarterly - January 2015
The way humans hunt for parking and the way animals hunt for food are not as different as you might think,” said Tom Vanderbilt in “Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do.” As the development industry moves forward and properties in the downtown core are developed or redeveloped, the amount of parking space available in Denver’s downtown is slowly decreasing. This is due to increased density, site limitations and new development standards. But is less parking in the urban core a bad thing? As a professional in the parking industry with an urban planning background, I don’t think so. The parking supply in Denver is more than adequate to support residential and commercial growth for decades to come. While everyone wants to pull up to a free parking space 20 feet from his or her office door, the reality is development of that nature is not conducive to a healthy urban environment. Research supports that “the common practice of requiring a minimum number of parking spaces to be attached to a new development – a requirement in a majority of American cities – can inhibit development, fragment the city, and make traffic worse by suppressing people’s ability to walk, bike or take transit,” according to Tom Breen, UConn Today. The seas of parking available in the shopping centers of AnySuburbTown, USA, are doing nothing but wasting land, encouraging automobile use and disconnecting their communities. To help combat the negative effects of excess parking, conscious cities (like Denver) have reversed these parking requirements by only allowing a maximum number of parking spaces to be developed rather than requiring a minimum. In Lower Downtown, for instance, this generally equates to one off-street parking space per each residential unit or 750 square feet of gross floor area for nonresidential buildings (to simplify a more complex Denver zoning code). Developers don’t mind, because when parking requirements are reduced the total costs of construction decreases. Keep in mind, the estimated cost to develop an underground parking garage is roughly $100,000 per parking stall. According to a September 2013 report from the Downtown Denver Partnership, there are approximately 44,000 off-street parking spaces throughout downtown Denver and more than 115,000 employees. Some of these off-street surface lots are either currently being developed, slated for development or available for developers to purchase. While there might not be a one-to-one conversion of surface parking to garage parking when a site is developed, parking is still being created as more companies and people move into downtown. In most cases, parking is added to the new projects but not necessarily the same amount that existed predevelopment. Infill development and reduced parking requirements are healthy for an urban core. More and more downtown employees are using alternative modes of transportation to commute, especially young professionals from the millennial generation, and these trends will continue. Driving downtown is not necessary when there are other viable options available, including RTD, B-cycle, personal bicycles and walking. These options have increased over the last five years and will continue to evolve as the city and county is set to update its transportation plan next year and will explore ways to help fill gaps in service. Take a look at what other, denser cities like San Francisco and Seattle are doing. Some new developments are not allowed to develop parking at all or are restricted to a minimal amount. In both cases, the local governments are evolving their parking management approaches by using performance-based parking and real-time occupancy information to show drivers where and how much parking is available at participating facilities. Performance-based parking is a strategy that Denver could use to help regulate the supply of on-street parking. Credited to UCLA Professor Donald Shoup, author of “The High Cost of Free Parking,” the concept of performance-based parking is to adjust the price of on-street parking according to the demand of each block. The goal is to always have at least one or two spaces free on the busiest blocks, in order to alleviate the traffic congestion caused by people hunting for parking. To Denver’s credit, its Strategic Parking Plan is helping the situation by promoting bicycle and car sharing and assisting private valet parking companies, but more could and should be done in the form of real-time parking guidance (smartphone applications) and performance-based parking rates. Parking is a vital element of transportation and land use planning, and given our car-obsessed culture in America, automobile ownership is not going away any time soon. Discussions by urban planners, developers and city officials about the “dilemma of parking” are taking place and will continue as Denver grows, but we have more than enough parking spaces currently to go around. Private parking companies help property owners and commercial developers plan and manage their parking supply efficiently. And we’ve yet to see the parking demand in Denver reach a point where we have to valet stack park at our locations to cover every available square inch with a car, which is a common practice in larger cities. So regarding the parking supply in Denver – less is more. Less parking equates to more people using alternative modes of transportation, which is better for the environment. Having fewer cars on the roads creates a more bicycle friendly and walkable downtown, which is better for pedestrians. And less people in their cars allows for more social interaction in the public realm, which is better for our community