Olympia community members used the public comment platform at Tuesday's Land Use and Environment Committee meeting to reiterate their opposition to the Planning Commission's recommendation to remove minimum parking requirements in housing developments.
Leah Melvoin commented that zero parking is extreme.
"The idea that you would let developers choose whether to make parking is incredible," Melvoin said, adding that the Land Use and Planning Commission should establish guidelines and regulations.
She urged the committee to look at cities where developers do not hold on to any real standard.
Melissa Allen emphasized that she is not opposed to growth but felt that the older neighborhoods are being neglected "in pursuit of the new."
She said the older neighborhoods have many issues, such as unsafe walking, sidewalks in bad shape and badly needing repair, overgrown street trees, and code enforcement problems.
Allen encouraged the committee to seriously study the parking proposal and all the other improvements to encourage development. "Think of the people that already live here. We are the backbone of Olympia."
Before proceeding with the zero parking measure, William Jernigen suggested we need a more robust transportation system.
He highlighted the difficulties faced by residents in accessing stores like Fred Meyer in Tumwater, the closest store for residents in South Olympia. "You have to take the 13th downtown. Get on the 12th. Go out the threads so you don't have to cross the bridge at the highway. Then get back on the 12th and then 13th. That is a long trip for elderly and handicapped people."
Jennie L complained about the Planning Commission ignoring the residents' comments against the parking proposals. She said the commission received about a hundred letters, and two-thirds oppose the zero minimum parking space.
Judy Bardin questioned the Planning Commission's process of revising the staff recommendation and eliminating parking requirements for multifamily units. The commission did not vote on it.
She added that on April 17, the commission eliminated the parking requirement proposal, which was not on the table at the hearing.
Bardin enumerated her concerns, including the lack of study on the zero parking policy.
She added that many streets do not have sidewalks to walk to buses. "Bus service is not robust in certain regions in the evenings, on weekends. It can be difficult for people to get to work or shopping without a car."
Olympia is drowning in parking, according to John Gear. He claimed that Olympia is struggling with resources to serve older neighborhoods because of the huge hidden parking expense.
"We are struggling financially because parking is the most unproductive use of our valuable land," Gear commented.
He welcomes letting the developers decide how much parking is needed to sell what they are building. "I would rather trust the developer with that decision, given the developer's incentive to not build something they can't sell. I think they're going to make that decision a lot more thoughtfully and carefully."
Mike McCormick described the Planning Committee's vote on the zero parking proposal as a "bold decision." He said the decision allows individuals and developers to decide how much housing is necessary.
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JohnGear
I think it’s important to stop calling this “zero parking” because that’s unnecessarily inflammatory and misleading at the same time. Start calling it market based parking, or capitalism, take your pick.
The proposal going up is for the city to stop imposing a rigid, cookie-cutter, one-size fits all set of minimum parking requirements, which have never been validated by any scientific study of community economic health..
The proposal is to let the free market function in Olympia by letting the people with the most to lose —- the developers and the lenders — decide for themselves how to do it, rather than dictating to them that they must supply so much parking per unit based on an unscientific cookie-cutter formula.
Say what you like about developers, but they are not exactly profiles in courage — they are absolutely not going to be building any residences with zero parking unless they have good strong evidence that they can get such units financed and then sell them.
And lenders make developers look like Navy Seals in terms of courage and risk-taking propensity. Financiers are not going to risk making loans to build projects where they feel that the market will not want the result. The lenders’ security is in the value of the built project (their collateral). Unless they see that the projects pencil out, — including the most important piece, market demand — we are unlikely to have many if any projects built with zero parking.
Our current top-down rigid parking minimum rules kill affordable housing projects because they say that, unless you can afford the land area to provide space for cars, you can’t even build space for people. It’s a very weird and sad situation we face, where we’d rather have people unhoused and living in tents and derelict RVs than allow residences to be built where the developer and the people financing the project carefully assess the risk and return and decide how much parking they need to supply to serve the residence.
The most likely outcome, after the howling dies down, is that, while there may be a rare residential infill project that gets built without parking, the average person visiting Olympia will not be able to tell that Olympia eliminated rigid parking minimums because developers and lenders will have every incentive to get the parking decision right for their market, and in most cases, that will mean providing plenty of parking for the way people are going to live. Where there is good access to transit, developers might build multi family with a lot less parking than is required today, but developers and lenders have no interest in building projects that will not hold value because they provided inadequate parking.
Saturday, April 29, 2023 Report this
zingZap33x
Oh this sounds like a really good idea, let developers make market rate decisions because they know what works economically. We can really trust developers to do what is best for people and let’s just let free market forces take over. Government shouldn’t be making zoning decisions, we should just hand it over to developers.
What makes you think that if developers save money by not providing parking they will pass those savings on with more affordable housing? To say this will help the homeless situation, is a stretch. Why should we be subsidizing developers who don’t put in parking by letting them jam up our streets with their parking overflow?
The impacts to not requiring parking will be real and will hurt the quality of life for everyone in Olympia. In our older neighborhoods that have limited parking, all you need is for a couple triplexes to go with no parking to turn that block into a parking nightmare. The developer is under no obligation to evaluate the parking availability on the block. Under the new proposed parking regulations, they could simply not provide parking because they are trying to squeeze a multiunit building such as a triplex onto a small lot. The effects of allowing buildings to be constructed without parking will be cumulative.
Parking availability varies greatly by neighborhood. Some neighborhoods have ample parking with two car garages and big driveways. Other areas, especially Olympia’s close in older neighborhoods often don’t have garages, driveways, and parking can be limited to one side of the street. The City should study parking availability and design its parking regulations around parking capacity.
Saturday, April 29, 2023 Report this
HappyOlympian
Leaving the parking decisions to developers a horrible idea. As for the comment in the article about having to take multiple buses to get to certain retailers in Tumwater, Intercity Transit has terrific routes established to get customers to retail locations, and also offers Dial-A-Lift, which provides free rides for qualified riders to the front door of any store or medical facility.
Saturday, April 29, 2023 Report this
TonyW33
I know everyone loves Olympia, or used to. That city no longer cares whet it's average citizen thinks or wants. Businesses are leaving because they can no longer deal with the extreme costs, the rights of the street people and philosophy of the tone deaf council. I chose not to live in Olympia and am far better off for it. There's your solution, just walk away of the idiocy of the town that used to be wonderful. Create a new one in Tenino or somewhere else.
Saturday, April 29, 2023 Report this
Claire
Olympia Shitty Council, the self-appointed social engineers of the century. Olympia's citizenry had its chance to remove and replace last election cycle, but didn't. Too bad.
Saturday, April 29, 2023 Report this
Yeti1981
This is the trend in hundreds of cities across the country. There are ample examples of it working quite well, actually. We need housing now. This is one small tool to allow for the construction of more affordable housing.
Here's a good article: https://planning.org/planning/2018/oct/peopleoverparking/
Monday, May 1, 2023 Report this
Yeti1981
There is absolutely a wealth of information showing that the effort to remove parking requirements is working all around the country. You can start here: https://www.strongtowns.org/parking
Tuesday, May 2, 2023 Report this
WilliamPorter
Yes!! Abolish minimum parking requirements!! One of the worst tactics cities have used for decades to prevent the construction of affordable housing. Next step: getting rid of the antiquated 'Spoke-and-wheel' bus routes so we can actually use public transit to get to work.
Monday, May 8, 2023 Report this