Then God Sent a Helicopter…
I’m writing this from the Sip N’ Sit cafe, which is located in the former American Legion building on Main St. here in the Haven. I’m here enough I don’t need to order, Leanne just brings me a cappuccino whenever I stop twitching. The building is owned by a local developer, Julio, who has plans to turn the upper floors of the building into 12 one-bedroom apartments. It’s the kind of proposal that cynical types will tell you wouldn’t happen— a small, local developer who loves a town is looking to invest in an aging downtown, creating much-needed units of housing and restoring an old building in the process.
Fairhaven completed a Master Plan not long ago. Under the Housing category, the first goal is:
Keep future residential development in or near existing residential areas to maintain the village character.
So here’s a local guy with a project that will move this goal forward in a concrete way. Should be a slam dunk, right? Roll out the red carpet? Bring out the incentives? As it turns out, while town officials seem generally encouraging, there’s an issue that could stand in the way of this project going forward. Regular readers will be unsurprised to hear that what stands in the way is the town’s own restrictive zoning. In this case, the issue is parking. Per recent discussions between the town and the developer, the town is insisting that he create (or arrange for) additional off-street parking for the apartments. Here’s a relevant part of the zoning bylaw:
However, my read is that this development falls within an established Mixed Use zone, which means Julio should only be on the hook for providing whatever off-street parking was provided in 1998. To my knowledge, zero parking was provided back then (correct me if I’m wrong here!). Here’s the part about Mixed Use:
For Every Vehicle (Turn, Turn, Turn) There Are Three Spaces (Turn, Turn, Turn)
1Regardless of how the zoning code is being interpreted, it’s clear the town is making parking an issue with this development. Presumably, the logic of parking requirements is that the developer should provide off-street parking for any and all future residents/users. If more people come and they have cars, they’ll take up spots that other people have been using. I guess that could mean that some residents who don’t already have off-street parking might have more of a challenge getting a space (or the most convenient space). Most of the time when people oppose more density, they’re really opposing the additional cars, not the additional people.
In the case of these 12 apartments, it would be hard to argue that 12 additional cars in this neighborhood would significantly impact the ability of everyone to find free, on-street parking. Here’s what the street looks like right now (mid-morning on a Friday):
Note that there are 2-3 spaces at the end of the block to the left that are two-hour parking until 5 p.m., so they’d be open at night for residents. The two cars pictured belong to visitors to the cafe. This is a mixed-use downtown area, with plenty of empty parking spots day and night. It would be foolish to hold up this project due to a perceived need to maintain a large surplus of free parking everywhere at all times. A town whose Master Plan explicitly prioritizes infill development can hardly rely on maintaining abundant free parking as an excuse not to invest in its own downtown.
Blowing up the (Parking) Spot(s)
The fact that in this case, the impact on parking is minimal may allow the town to momentarily sidestep the bigger conversation about what Donald Shoup calls the high cost of free parking. If Fairhaven is serious about avoiding the Growth Ponzi Scheme and working toward long-term financial sustainability, we’d do well to tackle this issue proactively.
A lot of forward-looking towns that are working to revitalize their downtowns are eliminating parking minimums. The Parking Reform Network keeps an updated map of progress on parking mandates here. According to them, over 1400 towns have made reforms to parking mandates. Here’s a recent Strong Towns post about how towns like ours could accomplish this by changing one word in our zoning code. The gist is that by eliminating these outdated and arbitrary requirements, you reduce the cost of developing new housing and commercial space and encourage more walkable and more financially productive streets in the process. It doesn’t mean that developers can’t or won’t create additional parking as needed for a particular project— if they think a project won’t be marketable without it, they’ll add some additional parking.
The most extreme example of the absurdity of parking minimums is visible along Stroad 6. The perpetually half-empty parking lots surrounding even our most trafficked big box stores create a sea of asphalt that, in addition to poor aesthetics, just isn’t the most productive use of land. It’s this very sea of asphalt that makes this land significantly less valuable and productive for the town (in terms of tax revenue) on a per-acre basis than our walkable downtown areas. See here for the math on this.
In the case of Julio developing downtown housing, the requirement to add parking for each apartment could mean he’s not able to create as many units, that the units are lower quality, or that the project doesn’t happen at all. Any of these scenarios means less housing, lower land values, and lower future tax revenue for the town. In the past, I’ve mentioned neighbors who lament that their adult children can’t find a starter place to live in Fairhaven. Do we want to limit opportunities for Blue Devil alums to come home and start their adult lives here because it might mean slightly fewer on-street parking spots? We do want vibrant, walkable downtown areas that dramatically increase long-term tax revenue for the town without adding additional maintenance liabilities, right? Is “lots of free parking spaces to choose from” a good enough reason to delay investing in that vision?
The Scenario (Here We Go, Yo)
For the sake of argument, let’s say that we did away with parking minimums (and some other outdated restrictive zoning) and got the ball rolling more on incremental development throughout town. Let’s also say that it’s all been so successful that there’s now a lot of thriving businesses in our core neighborhoods, which have been accordingly thickened. Despite the fact that probably a lot more people are walking and biking to get around town in this scenario, it would mean that we might hit the limits of our free on-street parking in some neighborhoods. First off— this is good! For the sake of our town, we should pray for this happening. In this scenario, our schools are better resourced, our town workers, police officers, and firefighters make more and our town will be in a position to make higher demands on developers clamoring to build here.
“It’s not my duty as mayor to make sure you have a parking spot. For me it’s the same as if you bought a cow, or a refrigerator, and then asked me where you’re going to put them.” — Miguel Anxo, Mayor of Pontevedra, Spain
But what about that pesky parking? Will it be enough of a problem that people will stop visiting or even living in Fairhaven? Will there be town-wide brawls over spots? Will people do that thing like they used to do in the North End of Boston back in the day and torch the parked cars of out-of-towners? I think before this doomsday there are plenty of things the town could do that would retain all the benefits of strong growth while alleviating concerns about parking. Without going full Shoup on the topic, suffice to say the town would be able to both grant resident permits to current residents and charge visitors for parking elsewhere. Maybe the permits would be granted free for current residents, giving them a valuable asset tied to their real estate, while new owners would have to pay for this privilege . Either way, parking would be earning revenue for the town. Similarly, charging for public parking (using dynamic meters) elsewhere would allow the town to benefit from visitors parking here. Per Shoup, rates could be adjusted such that there’s always a free spot or two in each lot or neighborhood.
I’m not going to fully flesh out these ideas here because this optimistic scenario is realistically a long way off for the town. The point is that thriving towns and cities the world over have applied solutions like these to parking challenges with reasonable success. Likewise, pretty much all the cities and towns that have prioritized parking over people haven’t done too well over time. Here’s a good tale of two cities comparing Niagara Falls with Asheville that illustrates this point.
My Name Again is Mr. Plow
In the discussion of the 12 apartments, there was also mention that additional street parking would be a burden on town plows. My interview with Morrisville Planner Todd Thomas mentions this type of “planning by the plow” dynamic. In Todd’s words, “we plow 40 days a year and we live here the other 325 days a year.” It could be the case that having a few more cars on our relatively empty streets means it would inconvenience plow operators during the very limited number of days that this is relevant. From a maintenance perspective, it’s also looking at the alternatives to thickening existing core neighborhoods: no growth means more revenue gaps over the long term and less money for maintenance, while growth outside of existing neighborhoods means more infrastructure which the town is on the hook for maintaining forever.
Welcome to the War on Cars?
I think it’s worth stating here that I’m not “anti-car.” Team G has two cars, one of them a three-row SUV with plenty of petrified french fries hiding in the cushions. While we’ve sidelined one of our cars for the year (as both a test of car-lite living and an attempt to bring down expenses), we love having a car! It gets our kid to play practice in the part of Dartmouth where the only pedestrians are guys who just got kicked out of the car by their girlfriends. This post is not part of a secret campaign to take away your cars. It is an acknowledgment that we may have a blind spot when it comes to the right to and need for free vehicle storage. If what we want is sustainable economic prosperity and a high quality of life, we need to be willing to consider some tradeoffs. I’d be happy to trade some of the overabundant space set aside for cars for space that accommodates more people.
This header is dedicated to Josh, who sends me decent header ideas only to have me ignore them in favor of bad ones just to spite him.