‘More Consequential Than Forward Dallas’: Parking Reform Gets Mixed Reception

Dallas city staff began overhauling the city’s parking code five years ago, and the far-reaching reform is nearly at the finish line.

In a briefing Wednesday afternoon, city staff encouraged the Dallas City Council to adopt a more modern approach to Dallas’ off-street, private parking regulations by lowering the amount of parking most businesses are required to provide patrons. The recommended ordinance updates are the “first and major milestone” to updating a “rigid, one-size-fits-all” approach to parking, said City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert.

Parking is regulated by a ratio system, and that ratio varies depending on what purpose a building serves. A coffee shop, for instance, isn’t required to offer its customers the same amount of parking as a single-family home; a home isn’t held to the same parking standards as a school. According to Andreea Udrea, deputy director of Dallas’ Planning and Urban Design Department, the current parking regulations are “unreasonable” and out of line with the reality of modern development.

She told the council that hopeful small business owners are often the most negatively impacted by stringent, car-oriented policies. Advocates for parking reform argue that the current, decades-old code fails to consider nuances like a business’s proximity to transit or the existence of ride-sharing apps. They also believe that reducing parking can help promote walkability, be a cost-saving measure for developers, and free up space for more housing or development.

“There are a million examples in the city of why the parking code needs to be revised,” Council member Chad West, who has been a shepherd of the reform, said Wednesday. “And there are also protections built in here.”

Some council members met the plan skeptically, arguing that those protections don’t go nearly far enough. As seems to be the case with nearly every issue presented to the City Council lately, the horseshoe is deeply divided on what Dallas’ future should look like, especially when it comes to land use.

Council member Cara Mendelsohn told city staff she is uncomfortable with suburban-feeling District 12 being legislated by an ordinance that she feels is more applicable to industrial or urbanized districts. She also argued that residents have not been educated enough on the issue, which she called “more consequential than [the] Forward Dallas” land use plan.

“In general, I find the position of what [staff’s] bringing forward to be ideologically urbanistic in a way that does not match my district and many others. I do not think we’ve done enough community engagement on this,” Mendelsohn told city staff. “I think this whole thing needs to slow down.”

Other council members countered Mendelsohn’s comments, saying five years is too long to spend on a city code update.

The recommendations result from 28 meetings of the Zoning Ordinance Advisory Committee, six City Plan Commission discussions, and two briefings at the City Council’s Economic Development Committee, which made several changes to the plan in a briefing on Monday. The council was also briefed on the plan back in 2023.

The City Council is expected to vote on the plan next Wednesday. West said while he didn’t agree with every compromise listed in the plan’s final draft, he “feels like [the ordinance is] pretty much there.”

What the Plan Entails

While the investigation into parking reform was launched in 2019, Udrea said part of the delay in getting to this point was caused by the Forward Dallas land use plan, which outlines recommendations for zoning. It was critical that residents not conflate the two topics. Similar to Forward Dallas, though, the recommended updates to the parking code operate on a use-by-use basis.

Some of the most significant changes in the recommended plan include the complete elimination of parking minimums for land within a half-mile of a light rail or streetcar system, small-scale apartment complexes with 20 or fewer units and places of worship with a footprint smaller than 20,000 square feet. Parking minimums could also be eliminated for bars, restaurants, and commercial spaces smaller than 2,500 square feet.

The Economic Development Committee encouraged a tiered approach to regulating the parking requirements for multi-family housing. Apartments with 200 or more dwelling units would be required to provide at least one parking space per dwelling unit, plus guest parking equivalent to 15% of the dwelling units in the building, loading space, and short-term parking options. Buildings between 21 and 199 units could offer as little as .5 spaces per dwelling unit with 10-15% guest parking.

Udrea emphasized that while these numbers would be the minimum requirements laid out in city code, many developers could and will still choose to provide more parking than what is outlined in the ordinance.

“We haven’t seen in the city a true supply shortage [of parking] anywhere in Dallas,” she said. “I don’t want us to make the assumption that parking will not be provided [if the plan is adopted].”

The plan also recommends that Dallas continue with the Mixed Income Housing Development Bonus Program, which launched in 2019 and allows developers to avoid some city requirements, such as parking minimums, in exchange for affordable housing units. According to the city, of 68 developments participating in the program between 2019 and 2025, 41 opted into the parking bonus.

Council member Adam Bazaldua applauded the recommendations, which he said were positively received in his district when he discussed the plan with residents while campaigning. He described the process of developing the modernized parking code as “robust.”

“I think concessions have been made, and to me, that’s what policy making is all about,” Bazaldua said. “I know when we talk about Southern Dallas, we continue to talk about growing … These are the types of actions and policy decisions that we get to make to help shore that inequity up.”

The code changes would not impact existing “planned development” districts, many of which already have reduced parking minimums, such as Deep Ellum and Bishop Arts.

Reactions at the Horseshoe

For council member Zarin Gracey, who represents Dallas’ southwestern-most swath, inequity was top of mind during Wednesday’s briefing. Gracey urged city staff to provide more information on how a lack of private parking could potentially impact “the residential experience” by causing an overflow of parking in neighborhoods. He also encouraged the horseshoe to consider neighborhoods that rely on car-centric design because they do not have as much access to public transportation options as other districts.

“When we talk about making things walkable, that’s not everybody’s reality,” Gracey said. “I don’t want us to talk past the unintended consequences of this, and I think sometimes we do.”

Council members Paul Ridley, Jesse Moreno, Kathy Stewart and Mendelsohn also encouraged city staff to consider recommending a minimum requirement for handicap parking. Accessible parking spaces are part of the requirements listed in the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the council members expressed interest in adding protections for accessible parking spaces to the code, even in uses where parking would not otherwise be required.

Udrea told the council that the Americans with Disabilities Act only applies when a service is already being provided. For example, a small-footprint coffee shop that completely opts out of providing parking under the ordinance recommendation would not be required under the act to provide an accessible parking spot, but a coffee shop that does offer parking would be expected to comply. If the city decides to part with that federal guidance and require an accessible parking spot even in places where parking is not otherwise offered, enforcement would then become the burden of the city, not the federal government, Udrea said.

“There may be a lot of people … who would be affected. That concerns me,” Ridley said. “There’s no harm done in providing a minimum requirement for handicap spaces.”

The coalition of council members who seemed lukewarm on the parking reform plan encouraged city staff to approach the Dallas Senior Affairs Commission and the city’s Commission on Disabilities for further feedback on the plan.

One appointee to the Commission on Disabilities addressed the council to voice her support for the parking plan. Stating that “DART is [her] middle name,” District 1 Commissioner Gay Revi stressed the need for the council to abandon the code that has caused the swaths of concrete parking lots that cover the city.

“Well, Dallas, it’s time to leave the 80s behind,” Revi said. “I urge you strongly to please support the change.”