When you listen to the news, read stories in the paper, or hear chatter from people you know about all the development going on in the Washington DC area it gets difficult to screen out exactly which development and project is being referred to and what it will look and function like.
One project on New York Avenue might be making a case for no new parking being provided, and you might think that applies to standards in Tysons or elsewhere. Let’s be very clear here, the new developments in Tysons (like Scotts Run Station pictured here) will provide lots and lots of parking.
The requirements of a development have changed when it comes to new projects and parking (does not include projects approved prior to 2010). Instead of only having parking minimums, as was the original standard, there are now both parking minimums and maximums.
Parking maximums are in place because the developments in question are within 1/2 mile of the new metro stations. Empirically it has been shown both in Alexandria, Arlington, and DC that the need for parking in these ranges around metro are far less than typical office park developments. Providing excessive parking actually causes induced driving habits at the cost of habitable (and therefore taxable revenue) space.
The changes to the parking are not drastic.
They may appear to be because a previous minimum of 1.6 parking spaces per 1000sf could now become 1.0 parking spaces per 1000sf, but look at the reality. The developer could just as easily provide 1.6 parking spaces (the maximum) per 1000sf.
In fact, a review of the plans approved already show that in many cases the developers are providing the higher limit of parking spaces for their buildings.
What this provides is more flexibility and therefore more innovation in planning for the projects, not a restriction. The market will ultimately bear out what an individual project believes is more necessary parking or space, and the consumer, purchaser, or leaser will ultimately determine if they agree with their credit cards or feet.
The more important element to the parking debate is what occurs to the massive surface parking lots in Tysons. 200 parking spaces dispersed across a 3 acre asphalt canyon is a huge waste of real estate, and provides no benefit to the public that a 200 parking space structural garage which takes up 1/5th of the space couldn’t provide. The idea is to take areas that most find ugly (as can be heard over and over from comments about Route 7 and Route 123) and turn them into walkable regions of the city; not by adding more sidewalk (although that is a huge component of it) but by subdividing those huge spaces into blocks and putting buildings (i.e. things to do) into those vacant expanses.
No one is proposing shutting down Tysons to all vehicles. The new parking requirements will likely mean somewhat less parking for future projects, but what it won’t mean is any impact to existing parking lots. Any surface parking lot that is serving an existing element (like an office) to remain, would need to include both the existing parking and new parking meeting Table 6 requirements into the structural parking garage. No one will lose a parking space.
