A parking spot out front of the shop sits empty most days, he told the Dallas City Council Wednesday afternoon. And the parking lot down the street he’s forced to pay for because of the parking minimum requirements outlined in the Dallas parking code — that sits empty too.
Council members say small business owners like Tibbits will especially benefit from the update to the parking code that was overwhelmingly approved on Wednesday evening. Council member Cara Mendelsohn was the only council member to vote against the change to the ordinance that governs private, off-street parking across the city.
Dallas has been working towards an overhaul of the parking code for the last six years, and the debate has earned 28 meetings of the Zoning Ordinance Advisory Committee, six City Plan Commission discussions, two briefings at the City Council’s Economic Development Committee, and, including Wednesday’s vote, three discussions at the Horseshoe. The city’s parking code was adopted in 1965, and although it has been tweaked several times since then, Council member Chad West has been a major champion of the overhaul approved Wednesday.
“Today is the culmination of a 6-year process," West said. “As in any compromise, no one got everything they wanted, but I think we are going in the right direction. Our city’s parking code is wildly out of date.”
In his remarks, he reminded the council that at the time Dallas’ parking code was adopted, smoking was allowed on airplanes, women were not permitted to open a bank account alone and some schools were still segregated.
The council overwhelmingly applauded the efforts of city staff who drafted the final code adjustment, which will eliminate parking requirements for land within a half-mile of transit, small-scale apartment complexes, places of worship smaller than 20,000 square feet and bars, restaurants, and commercial spaces smaller than 2,500 square feet.
Apartment complexes with more than 20 units will be required to provide parking on a sliding scale depending on the number of units in the development. An amendment approved Wednesday will require city staff to update the council on off-street parking regulations every two years. The amendment will also require businesses to provide a parking space or drop-off point for handicapped residents, even if that business chooses to opt out of providing additional parking."Parking minimums are pushing working-class people out of the city … We don’t need a bulldozer anymore to displace a community, sometimes all it takes is a line in the code.” - Azael Alvarez, Dallas resident
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Ensuring accessibility emerged as a top priority during last week’s council briefing, where the meager support for the parking reform was a far cry from Wednesday’s near-unanimous vote. Council member Paul Ridley raised concerns about disability access during last week’s meeting, but approved of the changes made Wednesday.
“Over the past several months, I have heard from all sides of this issue,” Ridley said. “While I may not agree with every detail of this proposal, I am confident that what we are passing today is good for Dallas and good for my district.”
Mendelsohn, though, was not convinced. Last week and Wednesday, she voiced frustration that the Dallas Senior Affairs Commission and the city’s Commission on Disabilities were not briefed on the proposal. After hearing Mendelsohn’s concerns last week, Deputy Director of Dallas’ Planning and Urban Design Department Andreea Udrea said she was able to meet with the leaders of each group, but scheduling did not allow her to brief the full commissions before Wednesday’s vote.
“This is another example where we have a commission in place and we’re briefing them after the council has taken action. This is backwards,” Mendelsohn said.
She also argued that the changes to the parking code are too “urbanistic” for District 12, which she described as more suburban feeling than Dallas' urban core.
What Residents Had to Say
A number of residents spoke in favor of the parking reform, citing the benefits to walkability, small businesses, housing density and transit that they believe eliminating parking lot requirements will cause.Some supporters conceded they’d like to have seen Dallas’ ordinance change go further; parking minimum requirements have been eliminated entirely in a growing number of U.S. cities, including Austin, Texas; Birmingham, Alabama; Lexington, Kentucky; San Francisco, California; and Hartford, Connecticut.
Brinda Gurumoorthy, a Dallas ISD teacher who does not own a car, told the council she is regularly forced to walk across sprawling blacktops that separate her destination from her DART bus stop. Eliminating parking minimums could encourage more Dallasites to rely on transit.
“Transit succeeds if and only if you have sensible parking and land use. … Parking reform would improve my life and the life of hundreds of current and future DART riders. Parking reform is pro-DART,” Gurumoorthy said. “People may be apprehensive about change, but we deserve to reap the benefits that other cities have adopted.”
German Sierra bought this building in 2020 to open a neighborhood coffee shop in Dallas and still hasn't been able to open because of a regulation requiring he have 18 parking spots, regardless of location, clientele, or local support.
— Strong Towns (@StrongTowns) March 29, 2023
Parking mandates kill small businesses. pic.twitter.com/5k4H0A819B
Members of the Dallas Housing Coalition also rallied behind the ordinance change, arguing that parking is costly for a developer, and underutilized lots are space where additional buildings could go. At a time when Dallas is desperately considering its handling of the statewide housing crisis, advocates urged the council to approve the measure as a way to encourage housing development.
“These parking minimums may look neutral on paper, but they are not neutral in practice,” said Azael Alvarez. “They are pushing working-class people out of the city … We don’t need a bulldozer anymore to displace a community, sometimes all it takes is a line in the code.”
A handful of residents also spoke against the parking change, arguing that eliminating or lessening parking minimums would be punitive in some less-urbanized districts that lack robust access to transit.
“Every part of the city is different, and being opposed to this is not just because we’re NIMBY’s, it’s because we aren’t urban,” said Tom DuPree, a resident of North Dallas. “We don’t have mass transit, we don’t have bike lanes, in many cases we don’t even have sidewalks. So we really do have to drive … That's just the way we’re set up. We’re not a walking community by any stretch of the imagination.”
