The Dallas Zoning Ordinance Advisory Committee on Tuesday acknowledged that the city’s parking code is outdated and dysfunctional, but members want to revisit the topic once more before they commit to a “no minimum” requirement for new development citywide.
ZOAC, a subcommittee of the City Plan Commission chaired by architect Tipton Housewright, submitted a list of questions and clarifications for staff and will reconvene to discuss the matter again on Jan. 16.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Senior Planner Michael Wade outlined staff’s recommendation to eliminate minimum parking requirements. A handful of residents expressed concerns to the committee about potential impacts on residential neighborhoods.
Wade said he expects the matter could go before the Dallas City Council in April.
ZOAC Member Says Committee is ‘99 Percent of The Way to a Solid Proposal’
ZOAC member Nathaniel Barrett said he was encouraged by the discussion in Tuesday’s two-hour meeting.
“It was a really great discussion,” Barrett told daltxrealestate.com after the meeting. “There was a lot thrown at the committee, a lot of things we had talked about before, but staff did an amazing job of catching us up on where we left off several years ago. There are still some details to work out but we are 99 percent of the way to a really solid proposal that I’d be more than happy to send on to the City Plan Commission.”
The proposal would not remove existing parking but would allow developers to determine how many spaces are needed for new construction.
Some committee members said during the meeting that they’d like to learn more about how Austin reached its November decision to eliminate minimum parking requirements and suggested maybe taking a tiered approach or looking at the needs of different areas of the city instead of going “straight to zero.”
Barrett, however, said he’s ready to go to zero.
“There’s not a good public policy reason to have public parking requirements in the first place,” he said. “There are better tools to accomplish the same goal. We’re already doing the hard work in other departments to achieve the goal of having good flowing traffic and streets that are not just filled with parked cars and lots of spillover parking in nearby neighborhoods.”
The Argument For Minimum Parking Requirements
Dallas’ current parking requirements — which designate one space per bedroom for a home, one space for every 100 square feet for a restaurant, and one space for every 200 square feet for retail — place a disproportionate burden on small businesses and entrepreneurs, Assistant Planning Director Andreea Udrea has said. The code also impedes environmental and neighborhood walkability goals, she added.
District 12 Councilwoman Cara Mendelsohn raised concerns in a September briefing that if a business does not have adequate parking, the vehicles will spill over into neighborhoods, creating hazards and gridlock in residential areas.
Different parts of the city have different needs, said Mendelsohn, who represents the only district in Dallas that is fully built out. Sometimes three or four adults, each of whom have vehicles, live in a small apartment where only one parking space is required.
The council member suggested designating suburban and urban areas rather than wiping out minimum parking requirements citywide.
The idea for comprehensive parking reform was initiated by District 1 Councilman Chad West in 2019. The issue was widely discussed by ZOAC in 2020 and 2021 and resurrected in August, again by West.
Barrett pointed out Tuesday that while the proposal is being billed as “no parking minimums citywide,” planned developments and other districts can make their own policies.
“There are some asterisks,” he said. “PDs, conservation districts, and historic districts have their own rules on parking and would not be affected by these changes unless they say, ‘Whatever city code says, we say.’ Oak Lawn, for example, which specifies its own parking requirements, would not be affected by this change.”
