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SA Page 33 1. An Option. In-lieu fees give developers an alternative to meeting parking requirements on sites where providing all the required spaces would be difficult or extremely expensive, such as small lots, irregularly shaped lots, or lots where vehicular access would be undesirable, such as on Broadway. This may act as a stimulus for development. 2. Maximize Shared Parking. Public parking spaces allow shared use among different sites whose peak parking demands occur at different times. Shared public parking is more efficient than single use private parking because fewer spaces are needed to meet the total peak parking demand. Parking that is shared among different establishments also allows motorists to park once and visit multiple sites on foot. 3. Better Urban Design. Cities can put public parking lots and structures where they do not deter vehicle and pedestrian circulation. Less on-site parking allows continuous store fronts without dead gaps for adjacent surface parking lots. To improve the streetscape further, some cities dedicate the first floor of public parking structures to retail use. Developers can undertake infill projects without assembling large sites to accommodate on-site parking, and architects have greater freedom to design better buildings in a more pedestrian-friendly environment. 4. Historic Preservation. The in-lieu policy makes it easier to preserve and use historic buildings and rehabilitate historic areas by allowing for alternative locations of parking garages. 5. More people on the sidewalks. When a development's parking is provided in a city garage via in.lieu parking, they will park away from their destination and must walk to get there. This puts people on the sidewalks, which adds to the liveliness and safety of the sidewalks and provides opportunities for customer sharing. \ 6. The City Controls the Parking. When the parking is built by the city through the in-lieu program, the City can manage it with market rate-prices for maximum effectiveness and can also keep the revenue, which can be used for Downtown improvements. According to Shoup, "officials in all of the surveyed cities judged in-lieu fees as successful, and they reported that the fees had become a form of administrative relief for developers who do not want to provide the required parking spaces." Staff recommends the creation of an in-lieu parking fee program for Downtown Redwood City. In Lieu Eligibility In terms of deciding when to allow developers to use this program, there are three basic approaches that we could take: ap~~e 26 - . -_.._-~ ....-----.-...- ~.--.,,_.__.-.-._.~,.__....____..__~____. ____.__.4_. '.~_