Real estate developers looking to build new housing, retail or office buildings in St. Paul will no longer have to read the fine print of city zoning ordinances to determine how much off-street parking to provide.
The answer is none.
St. Paul on Wednesday became one of the first cities in the country to completely eliminate minimum off-street parking requirements as a zoning restriction.
Many other cities have reduced or eliminated parking minimums in specific neighborhoods, such as their downtowns, or relaxed them for certain property types such as affordable housing, but few have gone quite as far as St. Paul in lifting them entirely. Buffalo, New York did so in 2017, followed by San Francisco in 2018, and Minneapolis, Sacramento and Berkeley, Calif. in 2021.
In a written statement following the council vote, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter noted that roughly 36 percent of the city’s land mass was dedicated to moving or storing cars. “Our rapidly growing population demands forward facing public policy,” Carter said. “This simple step will help add much needed housing and jobs as we seek to maximize this period of historic economic expansion in St. Paul.”
CITY OFFICIALS HOPING IT WILL SPUR HOUSING, DEVELOPMENT
St. Paul officials hope that tossing out parking mandates will open the door to new housing and businesses while moving the city closer to its goal of reducing vehicle miles traveled by 40 percent by the year 2040, and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.
In St. Paul, developers will still be free to install off-street parking to meet customer demand as they see fit, and providing parking is often requisite to obtain financing from lenders. Nonetheless, there’s no expectation within City Hall that a new apartment building or commercial space be erected with parking attached. Large developments will be required to offer users transit cards, traffic calming or other alternatives.
But “they wouldn’t need to acquire land to build more parking,” said Council Member Dai Thao, praising the proposal. Added Council Member Mitra Jalali, “31 percent of our city’s emissions can be attributed to vehicle travel. .. If you build a new bar, under our current zoning rules, nearly two-thirds of the land would need to be parking. That makes no sense.”
ONE CITY COUNCIL MEMBER OPPOSED
The proposal, which previously won the support of the city Planning Commission, was approved by the city council on Wednesday 6-1, with Council Member Jane Prince opposed. The council rejected an alternate plan that would have simply relaxed parking requirements, and then further relaxed them if property owners invest in transit passes and other incentives to avoid car travel.
Critics have called lifting parking requirements burdensome and impractical, especially in areas with limited or no public transit.
There’s also been some concern that the city might lose leverage in negotiations with developers over other public benefits attached to new real estate projects, such as installing bike racks.
“I think we should be doing a (parking minimum) reduction and not an elimination,” said Prince, noting transit is not highly available on the East Side and the city’s bike plan is underdeveloped there. “The reduction … meets all of the city’s policy goals and all of the city’s climate goals.”
EACH SURFACE PARKING STALL COSTS ROUGHLY $5,000
Debate over parking minimums has at times created odd bedfellows.
Progressive advocates, including many members of the cycling community, have long criticized government-driven off-street parking requirements as an unnecessary regulatory burden that drives up housing and business costs. They’ve called the elimination of parking minimums a free-market approach that opponents of government regulation should embrace.
Each surface parking stall costs roughly $5,000 to install at a new development, according to the city’s recent parking study, and structured parking can exceed $25,000 to $50,000 per stall.
Downtown St. Paul has never imposed off-street parking minimums, and the city eliminated parking minimums along the Green Line light rail corridor a decade ago. In both cases, the private sector has still found ways to steer visitors and employees of new establishments toward parking, be it parking ramps, on-street and off-street parking stalls or valet services.
Still, plenty of critics call parking along the Green Line and downtown difficult, especially when multiple events take place at the Xcel Energy Center, CHS Field, Rice Park and other venues simultaneously.
