Category: parking

Although the 9-1 vote (Warren Cooksey voted no) creating the Wilmore Historic District was the biggest headline out of the City Council’s Monday night meeting, the most interesting discussion took place around a somewhat obscure proposal from the city planning staff.

Several council members appeared to think the provision would allow parking decks in residential areas where they are now barred. (For the record, this is not what it would do, as you’ll see if you read on.)

But you can’t blame people for some confusion. The measure was on the agenda as a public hearing on Petition No. 2010-033, described this way in the lovable language of the planners: “… a text amendment to add new regulations making parking decks constructed as an accessory use to an institutional use exempt from the floor area ratio (FAR) standards, when located in the single family and multi-family zoning districts, provided certain requirements are met …”

The exemption from FAR standards (don’t even ask, I have been writing about planning for 15 years and I’m still not totally clear how FAR works) is intended to offer an incentive to institutions such as churches, colleges and hospitals to build parking decks instead of surface parking lots – in areas where the decks are already allowed but because of the FAR standards they’re more expensive to build. And with the appearance requirements, such as plantings, the decks would look a wee bit better, too.

“I have a problem with parking decks in residential districts,” at-large council member Susan Burgess said.

Planner Tom Drake, who was at the microphone: “This is not a precedent here.”

Burgess (incredulous tone): “In R-3 and R-4, surface parking and parking decks are permitted?”

Drake: “Yes.”

Burgess: “How did that happen?”

Drake: “They’re accessory uses.”

Burgess: “Has that always been the case?”

Drake: Yes, in my 20 years here (I paraphrased his lengthier reply. Meanwhile, Planning Director Debra Campbell and planner Sandy Montgomery, sitting in the audience, nod vigorously.)

Of course, if you’ve gone past Carolinas Medical Center or numerous large churches or Queens University (fixed from “College”) in the past 10 years you’ll see plenty of large parking lots and decks built in residential areas. Heck, CMC owns huge chunks of the Dilworth neighborhood and it isn’t likely they’re going to get deeply into the real estate business, but rather they’re going to build more medical facilities with vast parking facilities.

Parking is a huge dilemma for Charlotte and most other cities. No one likes a parking lot next door, but get us into our cars and we LOVE parking places. (See my recent column on the topic.) What this provision would do, if it works as intended, would encourage those institutions to build vertically instead of spreading asphalt across three or four times the land area a deck would cover. Sounds like a good idea. Assuming everyone can figure out what it means …