One long-overlooked measure to accelerating growth in Dallas is parking reform, as discussed previously in The Dallas Express.
“I strongly believe in the potential of Dallas to become a great city, not just a big city,” Michael Ablon, the founder and CEO of a local real estate investment firm, told The Dallas Express. “To do that, we must work to develop an urban fabric that will create generational sustainability for the experience economy.”
Speaking at a Metroplex Civic and Business Association (MCBA) luncheon, Ablon highlighted the economic need to overhaul parking regulation in Dallas.
From a developer standpoint, Ablon believes the absence of any significant parking reform can make Dallas appear less competitive than its neighbors.
“Density is our future,” Ablon claimed. “If we don’t make it favorable and we don’t incentivize companies to pick Dallas, they will just go to Frisco. In order to increase the quality of our city, its streets, and the jobs that move here, we have to make it easy, and that begins with parking reform,” Ablon said.
The sentiment is shared by the Coalition For A New Dallas (CFAND), a political organization that advocates for public policies that improve mobility, economic development, and quality of life for local residents.
“We can’t deliver better transit without greater density, and minimum parking requirements are a hindrance to adequate density, creating a chicken/egg scenario,” CFAND said. “Mandatory minimum parking requirements are not only antiquated and arbitrary in the present year, but they also inhibit good urban development from being streamlined and built with less hassle and haggling,” the Dallas-based organization asserted.
The Zoning Ordinance Advisory Committee (ZOAC) is the ground-level advisory body in Dallas responsible for reviewing potential amendments to the City’s Development Code.
Once suggestions are made, the committee may move forward as recommendations to the City Plan Commission, which then considers the proposed amendment before forwarding the recommendation to the City council.
In a May 2021 ZOAC meeting, city staff estimated that 75% of the time taken to approve building permits — another significant issue impacting the economic growth of Dallas — was spent calculating parking ratios.
Eliminating parking requirements could help in clearing up the backlog of local building permits and the amount of time it takes to issue those permits.
Current parking-related proposals under consideration include “parking reductions, design standards for parking lots and parking structures, and creating parking and transportation management tools,” ZOAC explained. “The intent is to accommodate the parking needs of development, preserve community character, and balance the needs of pedestrians, bicyclists, transit users, and cars.”
One idea that Dallas City Council members have considered is a housing proposal that includes an enhanced parking reduction option, adding “a new tier of bonus” to the existing Mixed-Income Housing Development Bonus program. It would allow builders to develop denser apartment complexes with fewer parking spaces in exchange for creating on or off-site low-income housing.
The recommendation was to reduce the current parking space requirement of 1.25 per unit to 0.5 per unit, according to an April 20 council briefing. As noted at the meeting, this optional bonus program would not work for all types of housing development projects.
Despite ZOAC stating it would consider a new framework for Dallas’ pressing parking issue with plans to implement amendments to facilitate the city’s parking needs, the committee made little progress this year, instead choosing to focus on the social and economic impact of short-term rental properties.
The Dallas Express reached out to the Planning & Urban Design Department and ZOAC for comment on whether any parking reform measures can be expected soon but received no response by the time of publication.
All ZOAC meetings are open to the general public; however, the discussion is between staff and the committee members, with the chair generally inviting public comment on the discussion item at the end of the meeting.
The final ZOAC meeting of the year will take place on December 13. ZOAC’s meeting schedule for 2023 can be found here.