Parking: More Expensive Than We Thought

A dramatic reuse of an aging church for the new Stepping Stone Theatre required a variance of 104 parking spaces, or 92% of the requirement stipulated under the zoning code in St. Paul, Minnesota, meaning only 8% of the requirement is directly provided by the theatre's property. Do the City’s parking requirements create a structural oversupply of parking in the city? It’s likely. I will revisit parking requirements in coming months, during which city planners and stakeholders will engage the future of local parking policy. The focus of this post is to consider the public cost associated with requiring developers to meet the parking requirements currently in place.

Stepping Stone Theatre is a success story, providing children with training and experience in acting and stagecraft. Shows in the new theatre on Victoria Street
are sure to be well attended, leading the reader to ask:  How will the neighborhood accommodate the parking needs during performances? The theatre has arranged for patrons to park in existing surface lots at William Mitchell College of Law, located across the street, and at the House of Hope Church parking lot at Holly and Avon Streets one block away. A few scattered observations about the area we can use for housing or other uses, due to the shared parking arrangement in place for Stepping Stone:

• Each parking space requires 200-300 square feet of space. If the theatre had been required to purchase and renovate a site allowing them exclusive control and use of 113 spaces, surface parking would represent between 0.52 acres and .78 acres of land committed to a conspicuously low level of land use and productivity. This area is equivalent to between five and nine residential lots for single-family or duplex homes.

• A mixed-use development recently built in St. Paul, with structured parking underneath, is valued at $157/square foot of the lot; at this level, the area equivalent to 113 parking spaces would represent between $3.5 million and $5.3 million of market value. In the theatre’s new location, a site this size might accommodate 20-40 units of housing or mixed use development, leading to enhanced property and perhaps sales tax base.

The car is here to stay, so devising intelligent ways of storing cars during their many hours of non-use is essential for cities serious about their future vitality and financial wherewithal. Ideas worth exploration on this issue abound, but one in particular deserves note: Adoption of a payment-in-lieu-of-parking program. A sample of potential benefits:

• Allow building owners unable to satisfy a parking requirement to make payments to the City, parking authority or business improvement district, in return for parking credits

• Proceeds would be devoted to capital financing for structured and/or shared parking, and pay a parking liaison charged with connecting parties for shared parking arrangements

• The City could be separated into a number of “parkingshed” zones, so that payments would fund parking infrastructure and agreements in relative proximity to property owners paying the fees

• Potentially, a local market for parking credits could be established, further enhancing the efficiency of the program.

Parking policy is a confluence of real estate development, public finance, transportation and land use, and hence advocates in each of these realms get involved in parking discussions. In the theatre’s shared parking arrangements lies one critical tool for cities, the leadership of which must be absolutely focused on concentrating tax base with redevelopment and forward-thinking approaches to land use.

Photo: Courtesy of Stepping Stone Theatre.