Will Richmond’s plan to remove mandatory parking minimums pass?

Nashville, Tennessee; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and the entire state of California typically share few things in common; however, all three jurisdictions eliminated their mandatory parking minimums within the last month. The City of Richmond could soon join the lengthening list of localities no longer telling business owners and developers how much parking their properties must provide should the city council pass a proposal put forward by 1st District representative Andreas Addison.

The price of parking

The idea that a new building should offer enough parking to meet the potential demand of its users may make sense at first glance, but all of that mandated “free parking” comes at a high cost.

“Whenever you spend money on parking, you’re directly increasing the cost of the housing it’s attached to,” said Stephen Wade, vice president of the Partnership for Smarter Growth. “Every dollar spent on housing a car is a dollar not spent on housing people.”

Even the cheapest asphalt surface lot costs $5,000 per parking space to construct. For garages and underground parking the price tag shoots up to $25,000 and $35,000 per spot, respectively. The $1.25 million cost of a 50 car garage (at an estimated $25,000 per spot) won’t be eaten by the developer either—they simply pass the expense along to the building’s new tenants.

A 2016 study from UCLA found that providing garage parking raised the rent of tenants by an additional 17%. The gains for housing affordability from repealing mandatory parking minimums aren’t just theoretical either. After Minneapolis cut its parking requirements in half, the rental rates for new studio apartments dropped from $1,200 to $1,000 a month due to the money developers were able to save by building less parking.

Putting people over parking

Since Addison introduced the idea to city council last year, 9th District Councilmember Mike Jones has been perhaps the most vocal proponent of letting the market decide how much parking to provide. His support stems not just from the excessively large asphalt lot behind the Southside church he leads but also from his family history in Richmond.

“People want a vibrant downtown, but you can’t have a vibrant downtown and a ton of parking,” he said. “My mother and grandmother grew up in Jackson Ward above a laundromat. Can you imagine if they had a parking mandate for that apartment above and the laundromat below? If parking minimums had existed back then, they wouldn’t have been able to build that.”

The city’s Richmond 300 master plan and RVA Green 2050 climate plan envision a future River City with more housing, healthier communities, and fewer cars. Currently roughly one in five households in Virginia’s capital do not own a car. To Wade, repealing Richmond’s parking requirements represents a sound first step towards that greener, more equitable future.

“Richmond has one of the lowest car ownership rates in the state, so any project or development that is trying to serve Richmond residents should appreciate that a lot of people here choose to ride the bus or walk to their business,” he said. “This should be a no-brainer.”

Will it pass?

So far, the planning department has been conducting a series of public feedback forums before presenting city council with a proposed policy later this year or early in 2023. 120 Richmond residents attended an in-person meeting, 71 logged on for a virtual meeting, 85 called into telephone town halls, and 48 people took part in focus groups.

The results of the public input process are not yet public, but many studies have shown that the results of such community input processes are not representative of residents’ preferences anyway.

With Richmond entering a new golden age of population growth, the change cannot come soon enough, according to Wade.

“We’re up against a space and geometry problem,” he said. “We’ve hit the limit on how many cars we can cram into our beautiful, historic, vibrant neighborhoods, so we need to focus on how to get more people to these places without needing to drive their cars. Neighborhoods don’t want to be overrun by cars.”

Beyond seeing mandatory parking minimums as a quality of life issue, Councilmember Jones views them as exacerbating the cost of living.

“I fear we’re five to ten years away from a housing crisis like that in San Francisco or D.C.,” he said. “If we don’t get creative in how we provide housing and new retail space, then our residents are going to be locked out. We’re having trouble now finding firefighters, teachers, and librarians that can afford to live in the city.”

Addison’s initial resolution to examine the issue passed unanimously earlier this year. Jones feels confident that the final ordinance will receive similar support when it comes before council in the next few months.

“You can’t be a climate-centric legislator and not vote for this, so I really think it’s going to happen” Jones said. “I would be shocked if it didn’t.”