What city staff and council members said was only to be a briefing about PARK(ing) Day in the City of Dallas — and a short discussion over a code amendment — turned into a full-blown discussion about overhauling the parking code.
In early August, District 1 Council Member Chad West submitted a five-signature memo for the city to recognize Park(ing) Day on September 15.
The international event is aimed at turning vacant parking spots around cities into “public parks and other spaces for people to enjoy.”
“PARK(ing) Day is a non-commercial project, intended to promote creativity , civic engagement…and play,” according to city staff’s presentation on the event. “Every year, thousands of parklets are created in cities across the globe.”
But, the memo also called on Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax to reduce parking in the city, brief city officials on the status of that goal and look into the “elimination of minimum parking requirements in the city” — a major overhaul to the city’s decades old parking code.
Along with West, District 7 Council Member Bazaldua, District 13 Council Member Gay Donnell Willis, District 5 Council Member Jamie Resendez and District 11 Council Member Jaynie Schultz all signed the memo.
Andreea Udrea is the assistant director of the city’s planning and urban design department. She says the code has been around since the 1960s.
“We all agree it is outdated, dysfunctional,” Udrea said during Wednesday’s council briefing.
‘The biggest problem’
The current parking code uses a “ratio” formula to decide how much parking developers will need to build to start construction. If a developer wanted to build a stable to board or rent horses to the public — that would require one space for each two stalls that hold the horses.
And if you wanted to build a sewage treatment plant — that would require one space of each million gallons the treatment plant could hold.
Currently, a developer is required to provide one parking space per bedroom for the unit they’re trying to build.
“Two-year-old in the other room, the developer still has to provide two parking spaces for that apartment,” West said.
But Udrea says the biggest issue is how parking is looked after throughout the city.
“I think the biggest problem we have in the city is the management of parking,” Udrea said. “The supply is not managed. Meaning, if it overspills, there’s no tools to deal with that, there’s no tools for design…Why? Because everything starts with ‘where will I place my parking?’”
Udrea says developers usually begin with the parking design because it is usually very expensive — and city requirement. She says affordable housing developers may looks\ at how much parking they can afford, before figuring out how much housing they can offer.
City staff also says the code poses a barrier to redevelopment of existing buildings, disproportionately burdens small business and could delay environmental and walkability goals the city has adopted.
West asked about the overall impact of what he says are many vacant surface parking lots in the area — and how city officials could incentivize owners to do something more with the land.
“It is hard to activate and to place buildings that are market value and designed as they are supposed when that building is surrounded by parking lots,” Udrea said. “Whoever wants a decent type of environment around them will not buy or occupy a unit that overlooks…parking lot.”
Udrea says that’s a big “alarm signal” specifically for downtown, the Cedars and South Dallas. She says city officials need to stop overregulating parking citywide in order to create areas that landowners are interested in developing.
‘Under parked’
Some council members were not in favor of getting rid of the current system altogether. District 12 Council Member Cara Mendelsohn says the parking situation is far different in North Dallas than it is in Downtown.
“I think I might have to host a PARK(ing) Day up in District 12. It might look a little different,” Mendelsohn said. “It would probably be people upset…about all the on-street parking because there’s not sufficient parking at the apartment complexes.”
Mendelsohn says people in her district are dealing with the opposite of what West described. She says there are hardly any surface parking lots in her district — and constituents have pay the price.
“What we have are very large apartment complexes that do have the one bedroom…but unlike the example of a two-bedroom apartment with a single mom, it’s much more likely to be a couple in a one bedroom with two cars, sometimes even more, with only one spot designated to them."
Mendelsohn says that leads to an increase in on-street parking.
“We are way under parked in most of it,” Mendelsohn said. “If anyone doubts me and wants to go check out some streets, I am happy to just name a few.”
Udrea says city staff acknowledges that the ratio formula used by the code is “blind to location.”
Mendelsohn also says the increased street parking causes more crime in her district. But Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia says he didn’t necessarily agree.
“I don’t know if its necessarily a challenge for policing, although obviously less congested parking would make it easier,” Garcia said. “I think it definitely is a problem for our residents.”
District 14 Council Member Paul Ridley says there needs to be a more focused effort to figure out what the best option is for a policy change.
“It is a very diverse city in the sense of types of development…amount of parking and the usage of land that results in different parking demands,” Ridely said. “My point is these needs to be a very particularized, thoughtful study of the requirements in different parts of the city. Urban versus suburban or whatever that divide is.”
Ridley also says he is not in favor of policy changes that are “implemented overnight.” Instead, there needs to be gradual implementation — and even pilot programs.
'Four years in the making'
West and other council members have been urging city staff to investigate other parking options since 2019. Just last month in August, city staff held listening sessions and reintroduced the parking issues they had heard from the public and other city zoning boards.
The code amendment that was authorized in 2019 was specifically for off-street parking.
City staff says they would like to incorporate other goals that have been adopted by the council. That includes updating the code to address environmental issues outlined in the city’s Comprehensive Environmental and Climate Action Plan (CECAP) that was adopted in 2020.
Udrea says the department anticipates there will be incremental changes to new developments and redevelopments.
“Meaning the existing development probably will continue to exist the way it is,” Udrea said. “Existing parking supply will remain and possibly will transition to some modes of shared parking.”
Developers will continue to provide parking at the market demand — which city staff says they have examples demonstrating that outcome.
Udrea says any feedback given at Wednesday’s meeting will be taken back to the city’s Zoning Ordinance Advisory Committee (ZOAC) in the Fall. After the City Plan Commission will hold public hearings on the proposed amendments and those will be briefed to the council in the winter or early 2024.
“This has been four years in the making. This is one of the biggest issues in the city,” West said. “I hope [City Plan Commission] and staff sees the importance of expediting their review, since it’s been sitting there since August 2019.”
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