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8A Page 25 The staff team has concluded that Downtown parking requirements should aim to provide just enough parking. Staff believes that this is the appropriate approach to parking in Downtown Redwood City for several reasons. First of all, it acknowledges our urban character and our location within the metropolitan region. In outlying suburban and exurb an areas, the guiding principle is usually "there's no such thing as too much parking." This doesn't create great places, but it can work due to inexpensive land costs. However, this isn't the situation in Downtown Redwood City, as has been discussed earlier. The cost of new parking stalls and the impediment to development that excessive minimum requirements create make the suburban approach unsustainable here. Professor Shoup holds that if cities charge market-rate prices for on-street parking, then they can actually eliminate minimum parking requirements altogether. Redwood City will be instituting market-rate pricing, but the staff team was not comfortable eliminating parking requirements. Instead, the approach was to simplify them and bring them down to the 'just enough" amount. Land Use Categories In order to develop appropriate parking requirements, we must first identify the land use categories for which we will create requirements. In developing categories, it was staffs goal to keep the categories simple and broad. This reflects a few realities: 1. There is no precision in parking requirements. The true parking needs for any given use can never be determined with precision, especially in a downtown, so there is no need to have dozens of land use categories, each with their own specific requirement, which create a false sense of exactitude. 2. Tenants change. Parking requirements shouldn't discourage the natural changes in tenancies that happen ~a downtown, especially on the ground floor-and parking requirements certainly shouldn't result in empty storefronts. Only major remodels or redevelopmel~.ts should trigger a parking requirement review. The approach staffhas taken is to create three very broad and simple categories that reflect these realities. The categories were designed to account for efficiencies gained through shared parking, and for real differences in the nature of buildings and their use through time. Staff sees no sense in differentiating between restaurant and retail space, for example, because in a downtown these uses use the same types of spaces and will organically change places over time. Proposed land Use Categories for Downtown Parking Requirements Cate 0 . S ecific Uses To Be Included In This Cate 0 Hotel Hotels. motels, and other transitory lodging. Residential All residential uses. Commercial All retail stores and shops, all restaurants, lounges, nightclubs, bars, motion picture theaters, live perfonnance theaters, personal services such as beauty parlors and barber shops, financial services, professional OffICeS, business or administrative offices, and medical or dental offices, churches and other houses ofworshi ,convention centers, exhibition halls, clubs and lad es, and dance halls. 'Pg~~ 1~ ~,-- ._-- ---'.. - --_.~.... ~",.,_. ...__..,_-..- -.- ......_______.__..___ _ .___ d._._____~__.~__. ___