The Arlington County Board held a work session on July 11th to review and provide feedback on the Residential Parking Working Group’s recommendations for parking minimums in the Rosslyn-Ballston and Jefferson Davis Highway corridors.
The group recommended establishing parking minimums in these corridors based on the residential project’s proximity to the Metro. The parking minimums are as follows:
- 0.2 spaces per unit for buildings located up to 1/8 of a mile from the Metro
- 0.3 spaces per unit for buildings located up to 1/4 of a mile from the Metro
- 0.4 spaces per unit for buildings located up to 1/2 of a mile from the Metro
- 0.5 spaces per unit for buildings located up to 3/4 of a mile from the Metro
- 0.6 spaces per unit for buildings located in the Rosslyn-Ballston and Jefferson Davis corridors that are more than 3/4 of a mile from the Metro.
The group’s recommendations also include reduced parking minimums for residential projects that provide certain levels of committed affordable housing units and projects that provide car share, bike parking, and Bikeshare. They also feature a new staff recommendation, requiring .05 dedicated visitor spots per unit in addition to the recommended parking minimums.
Developers can satisfy their parking requirements off-site so long as the off-site garage is within 800 feet of the new development and the developer enters into a 10+ year lease agreement with the owner providing the offsite parking.
The recommendations establish a mitigation level of 1.65 spaces per unit whereby a developer would have to pay a fee or park the “excess” parking spaces in tandem or stack them.
The County Board expressed some concerns about the recommendations. Several members of the County Board thought that the reduced parking minimum incentives for developers who provide Carshare and Bikeshare were not entirely necessary because including these services should become a common condition included in the 4.1 site plan process. Additionally, some members of the County Board were concerned that the current demand for parking in the Rosslyn-Ballston and Jefferson Davis corridors exceeds most of the parking minimums proposed by the group, which could render the recommendations aspirational rather than realistic.
The County Board agreed to publish a request to advertise for the recommendations in September and to have the County Board vote on the recommendations in October. Several commissions, including the Planning Commission and the Transportation Commission, are expected to have an opportunity to weigh in on the recommendations prior to the County Board meeting in October.
You can read the group’s report here and a summary of its recommendations here.