(A) General. The parking requirements established in this subchapter may be modified by the City Council pursuant to an alternate parking plan, which shall include a detailed site plan satisfying the minimum requirements of §§ 158.050 through 158.060 of this chapter, and reflecting the parking areas, parking space dimensions, driving aisles, access ways and associated landscaping. An alternate parking plan may be approved only upon evidence supported by a parking study that the circumstances justify modification, satisfy the objectives of this subchapter, and are in the public interest. A parking study must include estimates of parking demand based on recommendations of an IC registered P.E. experienced in parking studies provided by the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE), or other acceptable estimates as approved by the Director and should include other reliable data collected from uses or combinations of uses that are the same as or comparable with the proposed use. Comparability will be determined by density, scale, bulk, area, type of activity and location. The study must document the source of data used to develop the recommendations An alternate parking plan may be subject to any appropriate conditions determined by the City Council to be necessary to fully mitigate the impact of any modification.
(B) Off-street parking reductions for large developments. In order to prevent the establishment of a greater number of parking spaces than actually needed to meet the particular needs of large developments of over 150,000 square feet of gross floor area, a reduction in the number of required off-street parking spaces may be permitted by the Director. Reduction shall be permitted subject to the following conditions:
(1) Maximum reduction. A maximum reduction of one parking space per every 1,000 square feet of gross floor area or 20% of the total spaces required (whichever is the lesser reduction) may be permitted. The site plan shall indicate the location and dimensions of the parking area provided.
(2) Reservation. Sufficient area shall be reserved to accommodate the total number of off-street parking spaces otherwise required by this section. The purpose of this reservation is to ensure adequate area is available to meet any future need for additional parking spaces. The reserved area shall be located on the same site and noted on the site plan. The reserved parking area shall not include areas for required landscaping, setbacks or areas that would otherwise be unusable for parking due to the physical characteristics of the land or the requirements of this subchapter. Any uses being requesting and approved for a parking reserve shall have an annual occupancy inspection performed to determine continued compliance with this section.
(3) Installation of additional spaces. The Director shall be authorized to require that the developer install additional parking spaces, up to the total number otherwise required by this section, if the Director determines that at their sole cost additional parking spaces set aside in the reserve area are necessary to satisfy the off-street parking needs of the use at any time in the future.
(C) Guidelines; shared parking. Required parking spaces shall be provided for and assigned to each use, except for “shared parking”, which may be approved subject to each of the following requirements:
(1) Parking spaces that are proposed for shared parking among two or more uses must be clearly available to each use and not appear in any way to be serving a particular use, either through signage dedicating the spaces or through design techniques that would tend to orient use of the spaces to a particular business or building;
(2) Sites used for shared parking shall be in common ownership with the uses or consist of not more than two contiguous parcel within or adjacent to such uses and subject to a shared access and a written joint-maintenance agreement binding and benefitting each proposed use, as approved by the Director. The approved agreement shall be recorded and a copy supplied to the Director. Any uses requesting and approved for a parking reserve shall have an annual occupancy inspection performed to determine continued compliance with this section;
(3) All shared parking spaces on the site(s) shall comply with the minimum requirements for dimensions required in this subchapter; and
(4) The application of shared parking shall not reduce the total parking spaces provided to the combined uses to less than 50% of what would have been required for the combined uses without application of shared parking.
(Ord. 623, passed 9-8-1970)