Parking: It's Not Just About the Ratios Anymore

Mixing It Up

One major factor affecting the parking equation is the rise of mixed-use centers, especially when they serve as community hubs. Consider the case of the former Sunnyvale Town Center, which opened in 1979 in Sunnyvale, CA, and was demolished in 2007. A very typical urban mall of its time, this two-level center had three anchor stores and a parking ratio of approximately five parking spaces per thousand square feet of building area (a 5.0 ratio) provided by a network of parking garages. In total it encompassed approximately 400,000 square feet of retail space on 36 acres and about 1 million square feet of site improvements. The reconfigured Sunnyvale Town Center, still under development, has 933,000 square feet of retail planned, anchored by Macy's and a new elevated Target, a movie theater, up to 275,000 square feet of office, and 292 residential units, all sharing approximately 5,400 parking spaces, a denser, more efficient use of parking facilities.

A very different example of mixed-use development is a planned community in Florida, where a new college is being built along with the town. At the center of the community is a cathedral with a horseshoe-shaped retail downtown area around it. All parking is shared, and retailers understand that in this setting there could be customers who may need to search for convenient parking when church services are held, but the ongoing involvement of the community is worth this small inconvenience.

Today, the mixing of multiple uses to achieve a much more efficient use of space has become the desired real estate product. Not only have centers such as Sunnyvale been reconfigured, but new centers in suburban and urban areas are moving toward this mixed-use approach to create new communities. In both circumstances, the goal is to create a “sense of place” with a coherent identity.

Sharing the Spaces

The places where we shop are now viewed as contributing to, and even determining, the character of the entire community in which they are located. Although there is still great call for the easy in and out of the strip center with parking right out front, that approach will no longer work for governments looking to rebuild or create community centers of activity or for retailers looking to supply anything but commodity and convenience goods.

So, how do we determine the right number of spaces? Cities now take many different approaches to answering that question. Some tell you the maximum number of spaces that can be provided, usually with a minimum considered necessary to support the planned use. Others only regulate the minimum numbers needed and rely on market forces to limit the amount of parking. Still others will analyze the needs of various uses that are complementary and that share parking. This allows a reduction of the minimum number of spaces provided from what would be needed to park each of the individual components separately in acknowledgement that peak demand from the uses will occur at different times, and that visitors will park once and likely visit multiple tenants. Destination shopping centers usually have a longer average visit time, and may require a higher density of parking than a convenience-oriented shopping center. Complicating matters a bit, developments that are designed around mass transit need to predict and address the method of arrival at the development. However, modern traffic study methods provide us with much better tools to predict and plan for all of those variables.

Retailers are also refining how they evaluate parking needs. They have a much better understanding of how to assess their customers' needs and how they react to parking availability. Some customers may alter their trip times to non-peak times, while others, retailers have found, are not as sensitive to difficult parking situations as was previously thought. They also understand how likely certain populations are to take advantage of alternative means of transportation. Today, retailers are much more diligent about monitoring their parking needs, due to the high costs involved in providing and maintaining each space.

Recently, retailers have begun to incorporate online shopping into their parking models. Will the clicks and bricks distribution system prove effective? Do those customers simply need a drive-through pick-up or return? Do they park and stay? Would they prefer not to drive to the store at all?

Retailers are also gaining a clearer perception of how other uses at or near their site affect their operations. In the right setting, is an office use complementary to their operations? Is the restaurant across the parking lot truly going to compete for the limited parking located between them because they both have the same peak demand period, or is the specific use actually going to build on the trips to their store because the restaurant provides a part of the experience that the retailer's core demographic desires? Is the retailer's business part of shopping for entertainment or shopping for convenience?

Today, smart retailers have come to understand the economics of parking to the extent that they can no longer assume that it is necessary at any cost. Developers will sometimes place a premium on the “excess parking” demands of some retailers, and the retailers have the ability to factor those costs into their business models. For example, in markets where paid parking is the norm, a convenience retailer may actually want customers to be charged more for parking to encourage turnover of the parking, while other retailers may prefer a base charge for parking that is forgiven if a minimum purchase is made.

The Sunnyvale Town Center is an example of this new approach to shared parking. A theater is located next to a big-box store but the parking for each use is relatively protected by locating the doorways to drive traffic toward specific retailers. In addition, overflow parking for the big box retailer, which is only needed at peak times, is located in a parking structure that also serves residential and office uses. The retailer's peak times correspond to the times that the office users are least likely to be utilizing the facility, and the residential users have a segregated area that is both inconvenient for the other users, and that is controlled to allow them 24/7 access to their spaces.

The top half of the chart below shows how much parking would be required under average ratios for the land uses shown assuming all the parking had to be provided cumulatively by each individual land use to meet its peak demand.

The bottom half of the chart (based on data published by the Urban Land Institute) shows the savings when you apply the shared parking concept. In this case, we used the peak time for the most demanding land use (retail) and examined the percent of the peak demand needed by the other land uses during the retail peak.

This data clearly demonstrates that the number of spaces and the cost of construction (based on average costs) alone result in significant savings when the design promotes shared use.

Getting Smart

The cost of constructing, operating and maintaining parking has also led to other efforts to more efficiently use what is available. For example, valet parking for retail, once considered a convenience, is now frequently offered to allow denser parking schemes. Compact stalls have long been utilized, sometimes in conjunction with valet parking. Car stackers, once something only feasible in the largest of cities such as New York, are now appearing with greater frequency in other locations as well.

Increasingly, businesses other than banks and fast food restaurants are trying to avoid having the customer park and come into the store at all, with drive-through pickup being done by all types of retailers.

Technology can provide greater efficiency within more traditional parking facilities by guiding drivers to areas with parking spaces available, and even directly to empty spaces. We are seeing mixed-use developments and communities with signage indicating the location of parking decks and the number of spaces available in real time. Once drivers reach a deck with open spaces, internal electronic signage guides the driver to the actual spaces available.

Greening of the Parking Lots

Local governments are also seeking to reduce the environmental and aesthetic impact that parking has on their communities. Increased use of green roofs on parking decks, solar electrical generation and pervious pavements are all efforts to make the parking facilities a more friendly addition to the neighborhood than the dreaded “sea of pavement” of previous generations of retail. By having a greater understanding of the life-cycle costs of parking, developers can weigh the benefits of providing these community amenities as a gesture of good will, in addition to determining if such amenities are a good investment for their project. There is anecdotal evidence that shoppers stay longer and spend more in more aesthetically appealing centers. This would further enhance the case for being environmentally sensitive.

Requirements to provide bicycle parking and parking for other vehicles have become commonplace, especially in more urban areas. Giving priority parking to encourage certain types of users is another feature of a parking plan that municipalities may either require or reward. Parking for car pools or vans, and alternative fuel vehicles are usual beneficiaries of this special treatment. In addition, governments are increasingly requiring developers to provide charging stations, sometimes even specifying solar charging stations, as a condition of project approval.

An early example of this approach is Discover Mills in suburban Georgia, opened by The Mills Corporation in 2000. Here, Gwinnett County reduced the parking requirement by 10% and also required 10% pervious parking spaces, a bank of electric charging stations, spaces designated for Alternate Fuel Vehicles and a transit park and ride lot with sidewalk connectivity to the mall.

Other requirements that have come into play in recent years accomplish a number of purposes including improved aesthetics, water quality, air quality and heat impact. For example, use of native materials and design features such as bio-swales can reduce operation and maintenance costs. Slopes to take advantage of natural drainage and filtering of run-off are often employed. These features can also reduce or eliminate the need for irrigation.

Conclusion

The costs and benefits of new approaches to parking in mixed-use settings, in tight urban centers and in a more environmentally conscious marketplace, must be evaluated for any given development. But the case is clear that there are many new, and successful, approaches to planning for parking, providing a win/win outcome for both the retailer and the communities which they serve.

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Marsha Anderson Bomar, AICP, is Senior Transportation Principal with Stantec, an engineering and architecture firm. She is also a Council Member and Mayor Pro Tempore for the City of Duluth, GA. David S. Lima is Senior Group Counsel for Target Corporation, where he leads a team that provides legal services for Target's real estate program in the Northeast quadrant of the U.S.

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New approaches to parking are offering retailers and developers greater flexibility and the opportunity to reduce costs and environmental impacts.

For decades, parking requirements for retail-commercial developments have been driven primarily by two constituencies, both trying to estimate what the consumer actually wants and needs: government regulators, guided by public interests, and retailers seeking to maximize profit and convenience for customers. Unfortunately, both groups have tended to believe that those two goals are mutually exclusive when they are, in fact, totally congruent. Traditional parking ratios have generally been based on attempts to model the need for parking based on the assumption that it must always accommodate the highest or peak parking demand. Government agencies did not want traffic and on-street parking to become an issue on peak demand days and retailers did not want to turn away customers. Those ideas have evolved over time, and recently, in some cases, have been turned on their heads. Retailers particularly have begun to consider the marginal costs of providing each space versus the likelihood of turning away a customer due to lack of parking.

Those involved in the design of shopping centers have postulated for years that parking demands may be more “art” than “science,” but modern methods of studying parking use have greatly improved our ability to get it right.

Mixing It Up

One major factor affecting the parking equation is the rise of mixed-use centers, especially when they serve as community hubs. Consider the case of the former Sunnyvale Town Center, which opened in 1979 in Sunnyvale, CA, and was demolished in 2007. A very typical urban mall of its time, this two-level center had three anchor stores and a parking ratio of approximately five parking spaces per thousand square feet of building area (a 5.0 ratio) provided by a network of parking garages. In total it encompassed approximately 400,000 square feet of retail space on 36 acres and about 1 million square feet of site improvements. The reconfigured Sunnyvale Town Center, still under development, has 933,000 square feet of retail planned, anchored by Macy's and a new elevated Target, a movie theater, up to 275,000 square feet of office, and 292 residential units, all sharing approximately 5,400 parking spaces, a denser, more efficient use of parking facilities.

A very different example of mixed-use development is a planned community in Florida, where a new college is being built along with the town. At the center of the community is a cathedral with a horseshoe-shaped retail downtown area around it. All parking is shared, and retailers understand that in this setting there could be customers who may need to search for convenient parking when church services are held, but the ongoing involvement of the community is worth this small inconvenience.

Today, the mixing of multiple uses to achieve a much more efficient use of space has become the desired real estate product. Not only have centers such as Sunnyvale been reconfigured, but new centers in suburban and urban areas are moving toward this mixed-use approach to create new communities. In both circumstances, the goal is to create a “sense of place” with a coherent identity.

Sharing the Spaces

The places where we shop are now viewed as contributing to, and even determining, the character of the entire community in which they are located. Although there is still great call for the easy in and out of the strip center with parking right out front, that approach will no longer work for governments looking to rebuild or create community centers of activity or for retailers looking to supply anything but commodity and convenience goods.

So, how do we determine the right number of spaces? Cities now take many different approaches to answering that question. Some tell you the maximum number of spaces that can be provided, usually with a minimum considered necessary to support the planned use. Others only regulate the minimum numbers needed and rely on market forces to limit the amount of parking. Still others will analyze the needs of various uses that are complementary and that share parking. This allows a reduction of the minimum number of spaces provided from what would be needed to park each of the individual components separately in acknowledgement that peak demand from the uses will occur at different times, and that visitors will park once and likely visit multiple tenants. Destination shopping centers usually have a longer average visit time, and may require a higher density of parking than a convenience-oriented shopping center. Complicating matters a bit, developments that are designed around mass transit need to predict and address the method of arrival at the development. However, modern traffic study methods provide us with much better tools to predict and plan for all of those variables.

Retailers are also refining how they evaluate parking needs. They have a much better understanding of how to assess their customers' needs and how they react to parking availability. Some customers may alter their trip times to non-peak times, while others, retailers have found, are not as sensitive to difficult parking situations as was previously thought. They also understand how likely certain populations are to take advantage of alternative means of transportation. Today, retailers are much more diligent about monitoring their parking needs, due to the high costs involved in providing and maintaining each space.

Recently, retailers have begun to incorporate online shopping into their parking models. Will the clicks and bricks distribution system prove effective? Do those customers simply need a drive-through pick-up or return? Do they park and stay? Would they prefer not to drive to the store at all?

Retailers are also gaining a clearer perception of how other uses at or near their site affect their operations. In the right setting, is an office use complementary to their operations? Is the restaurant across the parking lot truly going to compete for the limited parking located between them because they both have the same peak demand period, or is the specific use actually going to build on the trips to their store because the restaurant provides a part of the experience that the retailer's core demographic desires? Is the retailer's business part of shopping for entertainment or shopping for convenience?

Today, smart retailers have come to understand the economics of parking to the extent that they can no longer assume that it is necessary at any cost. Developers will sometimes place a premium on the “excess parking” demands of some retailers, and the retailers have the ability to factor those costs into their business models. For example, in markets where paid parking is the norm, a convenience retailer may actually want customers to be charged more for parking to encourage turnover of the parking, while other retailers may prefer a base charge for parking that is forgiven if a minimum purchase is made.

The Sunnyvale Town Center is an example of this new approach to shared parking. A theater is located next to a big-box store but the parking for each use is relatively protected by locating the doorways to drive traffic toward specific retailers. In addition, overflow parking for the big box retailer, which is only needed at peak times, is located in a parking structure that also serves residential and office uses. The retailer's peak times correspond to the times that the office users are least likely to be utilizing the facility, and the residential users have a segregated area that is both inconvenient for the other users, and that is controlled to allow them 24/7 access to their spaces.

The top half of the chart below shows how much parking would be required under average ratios for the land uses shown assuming all the parking had to be provided cumulatively by each individual land use to meet its peak demand.

The bottom half of the chart (based on data published by the Urban Land Institute) shows the savings when you apply the shared parking concept. In this case, we used the peak time for the most demanding land use (retail) and examined the percent of the peak demand needed by the other land uses during the retail peak.

This data clearly demonstrates that the number of spaces and the cost of construction (based on average costs) alone result in significant savings when the design promotes shared use.

Getting Smart

The cost of constructing, operating and maintaining parking has also led to other efforts to more efficiently use what is available. For example, valet parking for retail, once considered a convenience, is now frequently offered to allow denser parking schemes. Compact stalls have long been utilized, sometimes in conjunction with valet parking. Car stackers, once something only feasible in the largest of cities such as New York, are now appearing with greater frequency in other locations as well.

Increasingly, businesses other than banks and fast food restaurants are trying to avoid having the customer park and come into the store at all, with drive-through pickup being done by all types of retailers.

Technology can provide greater efficiency within more traditional parking facilities by guiding drivers to areas with parking spaces available, and even directly to empty spaces. We are seeing mixed-use developments and communities with signage indicating the location of parking decks and the number of spaces available in real time. Once drivers reach a deck with open spaces, internal electronic signage guides the driver to the actual spaces available.

Greening of the Parking Lots

Local governments are also seeking to reduce the environmental and aesthetic impact that parking has on their communities. Increased use of green roofs on parking decks, solar electrical generation and pervious pavements are all efforts to make the parking facilities a more friendly addition to the neighborhood than the dreaded “sea of pavement” of previous generations of retail. By having a greater understanding of the life-cycle costs of parking, developers can weigh the benefits of providing these community amenities as a gesture of good will, in addition to determining if such amenities are a good investment for their project. There is anecdotal evidence that shoppers stay longer and spend more in more aesthetically appealing centers. This would further enhance the case for being environmentally sensitive.

Requirements to provide bicycle parking and parking for other vehicles have become commonplace, especially in more urban areas. Giving priority parking to encourage certain types of users is another feature of a parking plan that municipalities may either require or reward. Parking for car pools or vans, and alternative fuel vehicles are usual beneficiaries of this special treatment. In addition, governments are increasingly requiring developers to provide charging stations, sometimes even specifying solar charging stations, as a condition of project approval.

An early example of this approach is Discover Mills in suburban Georgia, opened by The Mills Corporation in 2000. Here, Gwinnett County reduced the parking requirement by 10% and also required 10% pervious parking spaces, a bank of electric charging stations, spaces designated for Alternate Fuel Vehicles and a transit park and ride lot with sidewalk connectivity to the mall.

Other requirements that have come into play in recent years accomplish a number of purposes including improved aesthetics, water quality, air quality and heat impact. For example, use of native materials and design features such as bio-swales can reduce operation and maintenance costs. Slopes to take advantage of natural drainage and filtering of run-off are often employed. These features can also reduce or eliminate the need for irrigation.

Conclusion

The costs and benefits of new approaches to parking in mixed-use settings, in tight urban centers and in a more environmentally conscious marketplace, must be evaluated for any given development. But the case is clear that there are many new, and successful, approaches to planning for parking, providing a win/win outcome for both the retailer and the communities which they serve.

[IMGCAP(1)]

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Marsha Anderson Bomar, AICP, is Senior Transportation Principal with Stantec, an engineering and architecture firm. She is also a Council Member and Mayor Pro Tempore for the City of Duluth, GA. David S. Lima is Senior Group Counsel for Target Corporation, where he leads a team that provides legal services for Target's real estate program in the Northeast quadrant of the U.S.

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