Still, change could be coming in a matter of months in Detroit.
In 2018, the city hired Austin, Texas-based Code Studio to update its zoning regulations, including how the city handles parking requirements, said Marcell Todd, the director of the Detroit City Planning Commission.
It’s been a long, arduous process, at times hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic, but Todd said that within about six months, a “major update” to the city’s zoning ordinance is expected, including changes to how parking is built into its requirements.
But also bit by bit, for the last decade or so, the city has chipped away at parking minimums, Todd said. It has reduced parking requirements for housing projects along major transit corridors, for example. Parking hasn’t been a required component in most downtown projects for decades.
“We’ve been trying to put in intermediate fixes, if you will, over the past 10 years or so where we see maybe there has been a change with the operation of certain uses,” Todd said. But there is “no one-size-fits-all solution,” Todd said, given “the complexities of Detroit, its size and I think its changing character across different parts of the city.”
For example, the city is considering a new zoning code for the Eastern Market district.
“We’re still making the sausage, so to speak,” said Christopher Gulock, another Detroit city planner with the City Planning Commission. “We haven’t reached the final decision yet. I don’t think we would do exactly what we have now. I think we would at least do a pilot (eliminating parking minimums) for a major part of the city, or the whole city. So we’re still exploring.”
One part of the sausage: The proposed MKT zoning district for the Eastern Market area, currently under consideration by the Detroit City Council. Among many other things, minimum parking requirements in the city’s historic food district would be eliminated.
Dan Carmody, president of the Eastern Market Corp., said there is “near unanimous” consent among business owners and developers in the district that parking minimums should be removed.
“It’s consistent with, I think, current zoning and planning (practices) for places like central business districts and commercial districts,” Carmody said. “Parking minimums aren’t particularly useful. Obviously there has to be parking and the market has to decide that, but it’s a pedestrian district and people can walk.”