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maxhinator123 t1_jbbdfs8 wrote

Oh nice technically mixed use development, NH needs this. Only thing is the weirdly large amount of parking for a development downtown.

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mmirate t1_jbbusbe wrote

Dense cities can easily be shitholes, and confining a shithole's residents to the innards of that shithole (by making them unable to park their motor vehicles at their residence, i.e. making them unable to own motor vehicles) does not make the shithole not a shithole.

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proteus94 t1_jbcd946 wrote

Parking minimums drastically drive up the cost of multi unit housing developments for what it’s worth.

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TiredCr0codile t1_jbckbxf wrote

People need cars when there is no effective transit....

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MahteeImHome t1_jbcv994 wrote

Parking minimums are still bad for cities, even if cars are the primary mode of transport. See this Strong Towns video on parking minimums.

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Intru t1_jbd6tdu wrote

Well if the market is there then the developer will have parking, parking minimum just take the choice out of the equation and creates a government induced demand for car ownership. Even if transit is shitty it's not impossible in Manchester, so why should you force people to pay the premium cost of developing parking garages and lots on property through higher rent? If there is need for parking the town should build a garage.

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TiredCr0codile t1_jbdlrzk wrote

So, the taxpayer should pay for someone else's parking? No thanks.

Manchester needs more employers first. They need to attract them with incentives.

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Intru t1_jbf1d89 wrote

Hey I'm also not a fan of using taxpayer money to subsidize private vehicle ownership, but we have things like on street parking and have you ever tried getting rid of those or razing the fees to better account for the actual cost of maintaining our roads and putting that on to the drivers wallet and not the base tax payer? Good luck! We unfortunately already subsidize driving and the storing private vehicles on public land at all levels. From more indirect policies like exempt SUV from safety and emission regulations by classifying them "light trucks (bigger vehicles create more damage to the roads), tariffs and restrictions on certain types of foreign import (limiting competition), oil subsidize. To more direct ones like, not having adequate gas tax and user fee costs to account for the actual cost of road related expenses (right now a ever increasing amount of that shortfall is cover by property tax and other general fund sources, this also puts the cost indirectly on local residents as large commercial lot owner pay very little on taxes on their acres of parking lots that out of town users benefit from without much of a direct payment to the infrastructure cost that supports these lots) , all the unaccounted for public costs that heavy car use requires (sewer, utilities, safety, etc that don't get paid directly by users), and the parking mandates themselves (subsidizing car companies by creating a induced demand effect, increasing constructions cost, and influencing development patterns). So at this point who should bare the cost of it and how much government intervention are we supposed to bare? At least with some centralized parking garages we can aglomerate those cost on maintenance and collect fees towards reducing direct tax burdens on locals that might not even use the facilities, and if we then removal of parking mandates we open up ourselves to less government intervention and open our towns and cities up to more creative land use, as we take away one of the biggest financial burden to construction for large and small scale projects. And it's all very geographically driven, in more rural places developers will continue to build parking and these mandates make more sense, they know that is just not going to pencil if they cant draw people in. But in urban areas we shouldn't be forcing it.

We are just not really accounting for our current reality when we create these types of mandates. I'm currently helping a client develop a small 20 unit building in a downtown abandon lot on the Seacoast. It's located on a portion of street that has 60 under utilized pull in on-street parking spots, a large strip mall parking lot that is probably in the the high 100 range in spots, very underutilized probably sits at 30% occupancy at its average peak. Next to it sit a abandoned plant and mill that has almost 400 spots that get no use whatsoever. Then we have dozens or more on-street spots on nearby side streets and a few public lots that probably end up adding 60 more spots to this total. all at 5 min walking range from our site. In a area that, other than the unpleasantness of having to walk by so many empty parking lots, is has pedestrian access to transit, groceries, public services, and entertainment. But the town still requires us to have 2 spots per unit, that's 40 more spots and will account for over 60% of the building site and will probably account for 1/3 of the budget through the site improvements needed to create a surface lot. We had a pie in the sky discussion and she would love to spread does units out to multiple buildings on the whole site and make it a bit more scaled and create a bit more of a historic street front down the length of the site if she didn't have to dedicate so much just to parking. We are trying to see if it's even possible, and if she can't fit 20 units she will not build. In a area where housing, urban rehabilitation, and putting properties back into the tax rolls is sorely needed its seem like cars have more rights to housing than people.

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TiredCr0codile t1_jbfm1qb wrote

Are you a civil engineer? I've lived places that actually have restrictions on parking or 1 spot per unit regardless of # bedroom in places that have poor public transit and it is disastrous.

Also regarding your seacoast project, Manchester is much different. It makes sense in some locations, not all.

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Intru t1_jbfn4mg wrote

I mostly work on code review and design in or planning and architecture firm that works all over the state, but I do have a civil engineering education I do not have a interest in that career path past site analysis and code review. So I've seen/work with my fair share of jurisdictions and their variations on this mandate. As is stated, there are areas where parking make sense and areas where it doesn't. My take is that we have made it a blanket regulation that cover boths those areas to the detriment of the areas where it doesn't.

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mmirate t1_jbj7zkd wrote

If the adjacent strip mall has some of their parking go unused, why are they not willing to sell some of the adjacent portion to the developer? And if the adjacent street parking is underused, then why is the developer unwilling to convince the city to sell some of it so that the developer can narrow away those spaces and gain a bit more usable land for parking?

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Intru t1_jbjafyb wrote

All those angels you mentioned are being worked. We know the owner of the strip mall is extremely problematic and hard to deal with. So we don't expect nothing from it. We are also working on the concept of renting/buying from the city. But it's all very unnecessary to begin with and will cost thousand that will definitely have a effect in building material selection, and cost of renting the units.

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mmirate t1_jbeb8b2 wrote

While parking minimums can be bad, the developer choosing to put adequate parking on her development can easily be a wise choice. Specifically, doing so means the development will be attractive to a much bigger pool of prospective tenants, i.e. those who aren't necessarily content to spend all of their time inside a shithole.

Increased demand means higher price which means the developer will actually make money by developing which means the developer will actually develop instead of doing something else with her life.

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megagem t1_jbeptmz wrote

Cars are the entire reason Manchester is a shithole.

Cars only support low density housing due to their space inefficiency and create a constituency with a strong incentive to protect unearned subsidies (free or below market parking, free use of road capacity, pollution, etc.). This drives up home prices, locks people into the most expensive transit mode, creates social issues like homelessness, and blocks most attempts to address any of it.

Manchester needs a dramatic reduction in parking and road space for cars to make other modes of travel safe and effective. Walking, cycling, and personal electric vehicles like scooters are the obvious best-in-class options in a city that lacks the population to support real public transit, but they're severely underused because cars are given priority on literally all roads, making them hostile places for anything else.

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mmirate t1_jbepzg4 wrote

Cars are the entire reason that people can live in cheap middle-o'-nowhere areas and work in one of several possible mutually-competing not-so-cheap maximally-centralized areas. If you get rid of cars, or make it impossible to drive a car into the centralized areas to work, then you will make life unprofitable for a lot of people.

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