Does 315 W. Ponce Need A Parking Contingency Plan?
Decatur Metro | May 27, 2008Smart-growth guru and frequent commenter, Scott, recently got in touch with parking expert Todd Litman about the 315 W. Ponce controversy. After agreeing that an 18% reduction in parking is adequate for the development, Litman suggests a compromise that protects both the neighborhood and lets the developer build fewer parking spots at the outset.
“…you can probably have no trouble with an 18% reduction from the conventional standard in that situation, since it has many factors that tend to reduce parking demands, including density, land use mix, transit proximity, good walkability, and lower-income demographics.
I suggest that you develop a contingency-based parking management plan, which identifies various parking management strategies that can be implemented as needed. For example, the plan might specify how parking will be shared, regulated, and priced (including cashing out and unbundling), plus carshare services available on site, and the development of an overflow parking plan. The plan can also specify how regulations will be enforced (for example, applying “resident only” restrictions on nearby streets) and problems monitored (for example, with a complaint line to the city parking department). The plan can include some additional strategies that will be implemented if needed (for example, if the city receives more than a dozen complaints of overflow parking on nearby streets), such as arrangements to use nearby off-site spaces (such as renting some parking spaces at a nearby church), new regulations, higher fees, improved bicycle parking facilities, creation of a transportation management association, improved enforcement, or even construction of additional structured parking). This plan can be enforced with a legal agreement or a bond.
This type of contingency-based planning reduces the need to predict exactly how many parking spaces will be needed. Most likely, few of these additional strategies will actually be needed, but it reduces the pressure on developers if they are able to say specifically how any future parking problems will be addressed.”
Sounds pretty reasonable to me. I wonder if any of the involved parties (neighborhood/city/developers) would get behind such a plan.
I’d like to know how this 18% figure came to be. By my calculations, it’s 27%.
Here are my assumptions and calculations:
Per code:
* 329 for office
* 220 for residential
* Retail is 1 sp per 200 sq ft
* Restaurant is 1 sp per 100 sq ft
* 7 k retail and restaurant planned–I don’t know how it splits, so use more conservative retail req only and that’s 35 sp.
** Total code req is 584. Proposed is 425.
329 + 220 + 35 is 584. 159 short. That’s 27 percent and that doesn’t count higher requirement for restaurant.
As always I am willing to be challenged on my assumptions and calculations.
Wardell
I think while we’re at it we should force Cafe Lily, Brick Store, Sushi Avenue, Watershed, Eurasia, Cakes and Ale, etc. to close. They clearly don’t meet the required minimum parking standards. In fact, the only retail establishments in the downtown area that would appear to comply are the Taco Mac and CVS stip center. What lovely parking lots they have!
What downtown Decatur needs is more parking lots! Forget that at night all of those office workers who drove into town have gone back to Gwinnett County and the parking lots are nearly empty. We need more! Why should we use this valuable space for parking to build housing (or even affordable apartnments … gasp … the horror), I want to see vast empty parking lots so I can be assured that I can drive my SUV across town and be ensured a parking space so that I never have to walk more than a block or two at a time.
Bill,
I don’t understand your train of thought. Perhaps you care to explain or perhaps I should explain my position better.
In my response to the original article, I was only asking where the 18% number was coming from and explaining in detail where I arrived at 27%.
Percentages aside, let’s keep in mind that either 18% or 27% of a large number, i.e. 425 is still a large number.
I wasn’t aware that Cafe Lily or any other establishment you mentioned is asking for a parking variance of 146 spaces.
If I am wrong, I am willing to stand corrected.
Thank you.
Correction to my previous post… “18% or 27% of 584…..”
Also to answer the last question in the original post. Speaking only for myself as I am not authorized to speak for the neighborhood, I would be willing to listen to any contingency parking plan. However to date, neither the City, the Developer, nor the Parking Consultant has offered one.
I don’t understand why our neighborhood is being maligned on certain posts, for example, as “whiners”. Quite the opposite is true. As a member of the focus group, I will go on record that we have tried all possible avenues to work with the developer and spent many hours in City Hall trying to work out a compromise.
However at this point, the developer is either not willing or unable to compromise on the 220 apartments and 7000 sq feet of retail that remember… is adjacent and backs up to single family homes. This is NOT another case of an “Artisan” type development. It’s larger and it’d smack dab in our front yard. All we are trying to do people is protect our neighborhood from what we consider overdevelopment.
We have nothing against Cafe Lily or against affordable housing.
Bill, this site was not designed so you can mock other residents’ completely valid POVs. This most recent comment has absolutely no baring to the original post, as Wardell points out. If you think the additional parking assertion is the wrong approach, spell out your concerns, don’t mock and misrepresent the thoughts of others.
Personal attacks are not allowed on this blog. Period. The general condescending tone of your comments are getting very close to being a personal attack.
Dial it back or future comments will be deleted.
To clarify a bit, the 18% number reflects only the proposed condos together with the anticipated amount of office. I had not previously heard a solid proposal number for the retail. Thanks for posting.
No argument that additional retail numbers change the overall percentage, but even at 27%, it’s still within industry norms for walkable, connected environments. Given that, I see a lot of value in Mr. Litman’s suggestion that an enforceable contingency plan be prepared and agreed upon. If the neighborhood and developer have worked together successfully on other aspects of the plan (step-back or architecture or whatnot), there’s no reason to believe they couldn’t do the same re: parking so long as everyone was willing to do so.
The developer wants a specific number so the project will pencil out. The neighborhood wants long term confidence that the parking approach will not degrade their quality of life. Under a contingency scenario, both sides could get what they want without the other having to be the “loser”.
Thanks for the 18% explanation Scott. However I still go back to the numerical reality that 18% or 27% of a large number is still a large number when compared to the existing parking situation in this area.
Nonethless, again speaking for myself and not the neighborhood, I’d be willing to listen to any contingency plans proposed by the City, the Developer, or the Parking Consultant.
Kind Regards,
Wardell
While my comment was clearly sarcastic, my point is that this is a walkable downtown area. Without parking variances beyond what the code allows, “Cafe Lily, Brick Store, Sushi Avenue, Watershed, Eurasia, Cakes and Ale, etc.” all would not be allowed to exist because they don’t have enough parking to fulfil code.
And that is exactly what Wardell is asking for with this new development, isn’t it? That the parking requirements follow code nothing more, nothing less.
I’m simply pointing out that if such thought was followed througout downtown re-development we would have more development like the CVS stip mall and Taco Mac – big surface parking lots that do not fit in with our urban downtown.
I really do think this project represents a choice about how Decatur continues to develop. Do we continue to follow the smart growth approach that our city planners have developed over the past 15 years or do we revert back to a suburban mindset where we provide everyone with a parking place.
If you think that my comments are a “personal attack” or “condescending” then I’m sorry, but I really do think that this is the choice we face and sometimes it actually takes someone like myself to point that out.
Bill, we all think our opinions are important. I started a blog under that premise. And I certainly welcome your opinion too. But as long as you’re commenting on my blog, I ask for a certain amount of deference to other posters. Thanks.
Bill,
No hard feelings!
However you do raise an interesting point and need to explain my personal position on “no variance”. On the surface that does sound unreasonable and in most cases, perhaps it is.
Regarding this Wachovia project, I believe the neighborhood has acted in good faith in trying to work with the developer. However we were NOT the first ones to dig our heels in. We have expressed our concerns regarding the size of this development to R-60 since practically the first hour of our meetings with the developer. This was the supposed purpose of the focus group; to get neighborhood input to the development. Instead it seems like we’re being asked to pick out tile and carpet colors.
To this day, the developer has been either unwilling or unable to budge off that 220 number plus the 7000 sq feet of retail. Granted the hotel is no more. No one really knows the reason why that went away. I suspect it was for business reasons as these developers are keen business people and thus driven by return on investment.
So the neighborhood has no choice but to dig our heels in and say “build to code”. If the developer can’t, then back off and let’s change the code through due process and public input; not through variances.
Besides If we grant variances for reasons other than hardship, do we really have a parking code anyway? Is it really right, or perhaps even legal, to “rewrite” parking code through variances? If not, lets redefine the code using due process to allow for shared parking and DEFINE under what conditions shared parking will work.
As for other establishments like “Cafe Lily”, they probably didn’t say they were going to be asking for a variance of 159 spaces. They probably only asked for a handful unless their business plan was a tad overly agressive.
However look what happens when you have lots of “handfuls” of variances? You end up with what we ALREADY have now; people parking in neighborhood streets such as Fairview and Ponce Place to go to Cafe Lily, Del Taquerira, CVS, Mellow Mushroom, etc.
Residences on Fairview are already asking the Decatur PD to start writing tickets for non residents illegally parked on Fairview. Residents on Ponce Place probably aren’t far behind in doing this also. Don’t the Decatur PD have better things to do? Ask the Oakhurst residents, I believe those residents would think the Decatur PD has much better things to do.
No one agrees more than I that parking is a problem in Downtown Decatur. We just don’t want our neighborhood streets to be the City’s solution to the parking problem. All we are asking is for the parking problem to not get worse and end up hurting the livability of our neighborhood that we’ve come to love.
This is where we meet and talk to our neighbors, our kids play ball and ride their bicycles, i.e. one of the reasons we moved to Decatur, . It just isn’t legally or morally right to make it our problem; yet to a degree it already is.
That being said and as I said before, speaking for myself, I am willing to listen to any proposal by the either the Developer, the City, or the City’s parking consultant regarding a Parking Contingency. I’d be very interested too in how it can be enforced without involving the Decatur PD who have much bigger things with which to deal.
Kindest of Regards,
Wardell
Bill, Wardell, et al,
The Brits say that “irony is wasted on Americans” so in response we Americans raised the fine are of sarcasm, (self inflicted irony with anger) to new heights. That practice, or lack thereof, will I fear raise its head in the coming weeks I as we debate the ‘better course of action’ in the many issues raised by the 315 Ponce development plan.
I risk weighing in on this discussion for several reasons. 1st is I have the good fortune to work in may of Europe’s most “walkable cities” and have some germane experience that inform my own thoughts on the present project. And 2nd, because I don’t belong cleanly in any particular camp over this whole issue. That is, I am neither wholly ‘for’ it nor unequivocally ‘against’ the development plans. I *do* however see what happens here as a precedent that we will have to live with for years. And since I have children here and plan to retire here, I am acutely willing to go to the mat, spend time and material to find a liveable solution.
Thus I am concerned as a neighbor, living but a hundred steps away from the closest corner of the property in question. And, I am Decaturite, one who kept property to come home to after some world-wandering years. I love the character of the city and want to realize its potential and viability….it’s true livability for my golden years and for my children. I have witnessed over the years really bad (and a few brilliantly good) examples of ‘urban renewal’ and enthusiastic development in several American cities, North and South. So I am cautious. But I favor planned careful change; all municipalities must change or die. So with that in mind let me refer to some of those places I have lived and still work that are, if not ancient, then far older than Decatur and which have had to adjust to changes in population demographics and transportation technologies. I’ll use towns not much bigger than Decatur, Aalborg Denmark and Nantes France (in Britanny) and one closer to SMSA-Atlanta, Manchester England as examples.
Nantes is 1,100 years old, it is the seat of the Duke of Brit-any and home of Anne of Bretagne, twice Queen of France. The 800 year old castle and nearly as old cathedral are central features of the old Medieval town. Buildings are old, streets are narrow, even in the part rebuilt after the Allied bombing in WWII. Nantes was part of Vichy France theoretically Allied with the Germans–though one of its main streets , La Rue des Cinquantes Hotage, commemorates 50 citizens randomly drawn and murdered by the Germans in retaliation for Partasonne activity supporting the allies. The point however is that they have had to adapt to changing technologies, train, tram, and the ever present auto. Which brings me to the main point…the auto, though somewhat fewer and much smaller than the USA counterparts are parked EVERYWHERE. The lovely, walkable, historically significant, architecturally wonder-filled town is blighted with vehicles parked in the most unimaginable places. Sidewalks, squares, jammed into public places…yuck. It is a feature of, by history likely, not having a way to deal with the omnipresent reality of contemporary life…the bloody car.
And this is despite excellent tram/trolley systems and inter-city trains. I travel almost exclusively by these conveyances when in France, but on occassions I have or choose to resort to hire a car to tourabout. And in my travels in Normandy, Brittany and the Parisienne hinterlands, the situation is the same everywhere.
Denmark is somewhat better, good public transit and flat topology lend to lots of bicycling, walking and public transit use. There seem to be fewer autos about, less than one per family, but even so, they have the same blight of the auto—and with vehicles parked wherever they can be fit.
The worst situation in my book is in the Northwest of England, (Manchester, Salford, Liverpool) for even with fine public transit (well the brits grouse about it, but I find it fine) the auto problem is horrid, and the vehicles encroaching on all the walkable bits make it hard to get about on foot or bike.
By the way, by fine public transport, I mean that which runs frequently, on time and when people move about. It is a well connected system of tran/tram/bus and cabs that just work well together. We may aspire to that here, and with full respect to the MARTA upgrades and aspirations of greatness, we are a far ways away from matching any of the cities mentioned above. We simply haven’t the will nor the money for doing what is required.
Thus we are left with…what *DO* we do with the reality of the auto?
I see no reason to believe that each resident of the planned 315 West Ponce project will want to buck the trend and dump the car. This is especially true depending on the demographic. If a hefty number of students rent, it simply is NOT close enough to Emory, and not really convenient to Tech to not have wheels. And three to four students per apartment should not surprise…so from the get go…even WITH the fully required complement of spaces we have a huge potential problem. How do we deal with it?
The lots for the CVS plaza already spill over to the neighborhood. Two blocks away I cannot park in front of my home some evenings and weekends. So Bill your picture of the great empty parking lots is not a picture of the reality I have been living, especially since the pace of development has picked up in the past few years. It just does not track my experience.
Now I want a walkable livelable town. I LOVED the arts festival and concert weekends, the garden tours, walking about talking with neighboors on porches and the like. I brag about the number of restaurants, a base that has grown from fewer than 20 when we bought in town to some what 80 now. What a cornucopia of choices! But we can kill the golden goose, we really can unless we are careful. One only need to look at buckhead and other aries in midtown to see where it can go wrong.
My point, is yes we need the parking. Intelligent parking, well designed hidden perhaps but sufficient to the lifestyle of people today and not our ideal of what people ‘should do.’ But I also think some population renorming is necessary to move more toward reduced auto density in our town. We do need better and alternate public transport and other creative solutions.
Lest I get tarred by the brush of NIMBY, I will freely admit that I do not want to live in Decatur, certainly not in my front yard, what I have to live in Aalborg, Nantes, and Manchester, where vehicles are crammed into every inappropriate nook and cranny because they have not provided for the reality of the car. We deserve better, future residents deserve better.
So I hold to the current standard for parking NO VARIANCE, until and unless we have clear solutions, not wishful thinking about where the cars can go….apart form spilling into and competing with neighboring properties.
Thanks for the space to share my thoughts, and sorry for the length of this message (paraphrasing Abe Lincoln to Gen. George McLellan) but I didn’t have time to make it short.
Duane
Hi, Duane. Thought provoking and well-reasoned post. There are many lessons to be learned from Europe’s most loved places but perhaps a certain amount of caution should be exercised when drawing comparisons.
The key difference I’d like to suggest here is that you’re largely drawing on pre-industrial examples where the pedestrian scale is so tight that there is insufficient slack for car absorption. In fact, I see it almost the opposite way. That is, the cars you describe, parked every which way, tells me that the form of those places, the intimate shared spaces created by the buildings and their cozy proximity to the street and each other, is so special to the locals that they’re unwilling to destroy it just to create more conventional parking solutions. Certainly they could do as many American cities did — and continue to do: level a block somewhere in the middle of everything and build a municipal parking structure. The fact that they have not is, to me, testament to the power of endearing walkable environments.
In short, maybe the fact that they have a longer view historically allows them to see that all conditions inevitably rise and fall and that, in the bigger picture, the place itself is more important than a hundred-year run of sloppy parking.
On the flip side, most of downtown Decatur was destroyed (or severely compromised) in the 60s and 70s in unfortunate efforts to compete with the booming suburbs by bowing to the influence of a massive — and growing — happy motoring culture. We tore down buildings to increase parking. We built “starchitecture” knock-off towers-in-a-park that became dated towers-in-a-parking lot. Essentially, we disassembled that which allowed us to compete economically. Our point of differentiation, if you will.
Fortunately, the Town Center plan in the mid 80s and its subsequent follow-up, the Strategic Plan, recognized the folly of this approach and set out to fix it. In large part, our redevelopment of the past 20 years has been in an effort to fix the mistakes of the 20 before that by marrying the historic lessons of what makes us special with the need to create a community of the almost organic interdependencies that allow us to evolve to meet changing conditions.
Which is all to say that Decatur is almost the flip side of the examples you provide. We have more than enough parking to absorb our current car culture (which, given the price of gas, is quite likely hitting or beyond its peak). If anything, we’re trying to scale back our parking demands to get a little closer to the village and a little further from the strip mall.
Getting back to the subject of this blog entry, I have to think the answer isn’t black and white. There’s a middle ground where everyone can achieve their objectives, even if it’s not in the way they initially expected. Adhering hard and fast to numbers in the zoning code is not the way to get there. We need to be more creative than that.
We have more than enough parking to absorb our current car culture (which, given the price of gas, is quite likely hitting or beyond its peak). If anything, we’re trying to scale back our parking demands to get a little closer to the village and a little further from the strip mall.
…..
Adhering hard and fast to numbers in the zoning code is not the way to get there. We need to be more creative than that.
Exactaly, right (again) Steve! You put things much more eloquently (and less sarcasticly than I do).
I hear all this talk about Decatur having enough parking.
1) Where is it?
2) Is it free?
3) How can we guarantee that any overflow of parking from this development (or other commercial property) will use it and not the neighborhood streets?
4) Why isn’t the current overflow from restaurants like Del Taqueria using it instead of parking on Fairview?
As for 3 and 4, when it comes to overflow parking, people tend to park at the closest place. If it’s free, it’s even better. At this time, that’s neighborhood streets such as Fairview, Montgomery and Ponce Place.
As I mentioned earlier, I don’t want to be bothering the DecaturPD to enforce the neighborhood parking rule. They have much more important things to be policing.
I just answered my own question about where all this parking is…
http://www.decaturga.com/cgs_citysvcs_ced_parking.aspx
However if you notice, there is NO FREE PARKING in any of these places. Therefore it is logical to assume that if the residents and guests don’t park in the deck because it’s either full or inconvenient, they will end up parking FREE on either Montgomery, Fairview, Ponce Place which is what we don’t want!!
Wardell
I’m not sure why it’s assumed that the Decatur PD can’t handle monitoring the parking on these streets. I recognize there are other, more important issues (like theft in Oakhurst) that take up some of the PD’s time, but I have yet to hear that they’re stretched to the point where they can’t enforce parking laws. In fact, they recently came down our street and gave out tickets to everyone that was parked the wrong way. It’s a great money-maker!
If the neighborhood doesn’t think the PD will monitor the situation consistently enough, that’s one thing. Perhaps the city could provide some guarantee (as suggested in the original post). But I’ve yet to see evidence that suggests that they couldn’t handle the extra workload.
I’d rather enforce the existing law.
We keep raising the bar don’t we Wardell?
Now it is no longer enough to have enough parking, but that parking has to be FREE? If we are going to suggest that the city strictly follows the code on parking requirements, I do not think there is anything in the code that requires that required parking facilities be free. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
I fully support the residential streets surrounding downtown being designated as “resident only” and it should be enforced by the Decatur PD, but stop using Oakhurst’s recent recent break-in problem for your own benefit. I think our police can handle it (and I might mention are doing a fine job). You know, Oakhurst is actually quite a pleasant and safe neighborhood. We’re doing just fine over here.
Not to mention officers working the downtown beat are not the same officers working the southside. And don’t the Decatur Police have their own parking enforcement officers who only work parking violations?
Just looked at that link Wardell and both the courthouse and the Maloof parking decks (representing probably close to 1,000 spots) are FREE after 5PM.
Maybe the city needs to do a better job of directing folks to park there.
The scope of this thread keeps pointing out the obvious: we are faced with a program management challenge, not a supply problem. We have established that Decatur visitors can park legally without much problem — sometimes free, sometimes for a fee. However, keep in mind that there is no such thing as Free Parking. Someone always pays. Sometimes it’s the property owner; sometimes it’s the taxpayer; sometimes it’s the person parking the car. If you don’t like the price of the products you purchase reflecting the “free parking” you used, or if you don’t like the idea of your tax dollars subsidizing drivers, then payment by the driver is the fairest way to go.
Regardless, it’s not the point here. The point is that if the adjacent neighborhood’s existing resident-only parking ordinance were enforced effectively, all this back and forth would simply vanish. And it’s not an unreasonable requirement in development circles for the developer of the project in question to play a part in making that happen.
Finally, let’s neuter the argument that Decatur PD has bigger fish to fry. The city has an existing infrastructure in place to enforce parking: the PALS folks. They are more cost effective and easier to source and train than a police officer. All we need to do is increase the size of the PALS staff and have dedicated enforcers working the neighborhood between 11am and 2pm and then from 5pm to 10pm (or so). It would not be unreasonable to require the developer to subsidize this staff cost.
Why is everyone shouting positions instead of working on solutions? Seems like a good way to get nowhere.
Re: previous comment about Decatur PD having dedicated folks working parking violations (PALS). The PALS are actually part of Decatur Downtown Development Authority working under a Memorandum of Understanding with the PD. They are only authorized to issue meter violations and nothing else. They cannot issue citations for No Parking zones, Resident Parking violations, etc. My suggestion is to approach your City Commissioner about expanding their scope and size if you want them to enforce other regulations.
I agree that an administrative redefinition of duties for the PALS squad seems like a pretty small deal if that’s all that prevents the neighborhood folks from maintaining the quality of life they’re used to. It certainly beats shelling out $20,000 a space for parking that’s not actually necessary.
Hey, Scott, like I said, take to the people who can make it happen.