Thursday’s City Plan Commission meeting called to discuss long-awaited changes to Dallas’ parking code may not have ended in a vote, but it did reveal that commissioners do not feel a citywide total ban on parking minimums will be an effective strategy for Dallas.
Reevaluating Dallas’ parking code, which was written in 1965, has been a five-year-long process. On Thursday, commissioners spent seven hours parsing through 72 pages of an amended parking rulebook proposed by Dallas’ Zoning Ordinance Advisory Committee (ZOAC).
While commissioners seemed open to eliminating parking minimums in some parts of the city — like areas directly surrounding a light rail station or outside of small restaurants or retail areas — they hesitated to embrace ZOAC’s recommendation of total elimination. Melissa Kingston, commissioner for District 14, expressed concern with ZOAC’s all or nothing approach, stating that a total elimination of parking minimums could create problems for Dallas’ leaders down the road.
“We can’t take a look five years from now and say ‘Mm, that’s not working for us,’” Kingston warned. “The only way to reimpose [parking minimums] would be to do what we did back in the '60s and create this fictional theory of delta credits.”
Delta credits are a sort of nebulous creation of the city that credit business owners whose properties were built prior to a parking minimum requirement. City staff warned that if Dallas leaders eliminate parking minimums now and decide to reinstate the requirements in a decade, the city will find itself keeping track of delta credits for any business that opened within that time.
Tipton Housewright, commissioner for District 10, proposed a set of guidelines for when parking minimums are or aren’t appropriate, which the commission will discuss on Feb. 13. The suggestions seemed to draw a thin line between the dozens of public speakers who addressed the commission Thursday, balancing the perceived benefits of eliminating parking minimums with the concerns of property owners around the city.
As with the conversation surrounding Forward Dallas last year, lines of opposition and support for eliminating parking minimums seemed to be drawn by generation.
Community Input on Parking Minimums
Of the dozen or so Gen-Z and millennial speakers who addressed the commission Thursday, all spoke in favor of eliminating parking minimums in Dallas. Some spoke to the impact that decreasing car dependency would have on walkability and public transit ridership, while others took a business-minded approach.
Andy Bartels, an East Dallas resident, told the commission that parking requirements have prevented him from opening a sporting goods store in his neighborhood, despite his renting a storefront with 18 parking spaces in front of it.
“Lifting this parking requirement will allow people like me to open businesses and use existing buildings as they stand,” Bartels said. “[It] will have an immediate and positive impact on the area from the small business perspective as well as a tax revenue standpoint.”
But other residents warned that eliminating parking minimums may not be appropriate for every corner of Dallas. City staff presented several strategies for decreasing car usage in the document — such as requiring businesses to install bike racks and offering incentives for businesses to install showers for employees who chose to bike to work — but Ellen Taft from Dallas’ “very Southwest-most corner,” stated many of those strategies would not apply to her neighborhood.
“We have no transit. We have no bus service, we have no DART service, the closest grocery store is four miles away,” Taft said. “It's unacceptable to say that we can do without any parking regulations. One size doesn't fit the whole city of Dallas.”
Taft’s concern was one echoed by Commissioners Deborah Carpenter and Darrell Herbert, who represent West Dallas and parts of Oak Cliff, respectively. Both suggested that an ordinance that eliminates parking requirements in lieu of public transit will negatively impact communities that have been historically underserved, whether they be food deserts, have minimal access to DART service or a combination of the two.
But several older Dallasites who spoke in opposition to eliminating parking minimums seemed to echo concerns waived during the Forward Dallas process: by getting rid of parking requirements in retail and restaurant districts, parking will inevitably spill out into nearby neighborhoods, they said.
Just as many hot-button local issues of the recent past have played out, this discussion found its way to debating the sanctity of the single-family neighborhood. For Abraham Moreno, a Dallas ISD senior and member of Dallas’ Youth Commission, the concern is a somewhat fair one — older generations have known Dallas a certain way for decades. Why would they change it?
That change is inevitable if Dallas doesn’t want to get left behind, he believes. Last year, Austin became the largest city in the country to implement a total ban on parking minimums, and Atlanta began axing requirements in certain districts.
Some commissioners warned that both Austin and Atlanta’s initiatives are too fresh to offer tangible data to Dallas’ policy makers, but Moreno believes those cities' actions are a sign of the times.
“We have to start acknowledging that Dallas is not a small town anymore. It’s a big, thriving city with people who want to take transit, who want to walk. There are people who want to live in apartments and townhomes and duplexes,” Moreno told the Observer. “It’s not this endless urban sprawl where everyone takes their car to go home. It’s not that anymore. Dallas is a changing city.”
Where Commissioners Stand
The City Plan Commission will take Commissioner Housewright’s suggestions into consideration on Feb. 13.
Among the recommendations are keeping parking minimums for bars and restaurants but changing the requirement to one space per every 200 square feet as opposed to the current 1:100 ratio; eliminating the requirements completely for bars, restaurants and retail spaces of less than 2,500 square feet; keeping minimum requirements for schools, churches and commercial amusement spaces; eliminating parking minimums in areas within a half-mile of a rail station; allowing paid parking citywide; and requiring loading spaces for any multifamily developments.
Kingston said Housewright’s plan included “a lot she could get behind,” while a more measured Carpenter remarked she “needs more time to think through” the changes.
“I think we have a consensus that an ordinance that originated in 1965, 60 years ago, needs some attention,” Housewright said. “I think it’s time to move forward to eliminate minimums wherever possible.”
