Why is sustainability important? (projects, area, buildings, electric)

[nei]

Originally Posted by Katarina Witt

Actually, he said this about developers: "And developers are pretty good at figuring out how much parking is needed vs. wasteful, which then lets the market drive prices down." I've never seen any evidence of this and I've been following developer stuff for 30+ years here in Louisville. They usually propose fewer aces than anyone else thinks necessary. Let me finish with a quote that was in my local paper yesterday: "Uh-oh, Lafayette is coming down with a case of Boulder-itis. Remove parking spaces and people will magically start walking and riding bikes everywhere. Doesn't work in Boulder, isn't going to work in Lafayette."

Ok, fine I read that post fast. Not going to comment on the rest, since I'm unfamiliar with Lafayette or Boulder. But I wouldn't expect parking built to have much affect on parking demand on Long Island with a few exceptions.

[mhays25]

Originally Posted by Malloric

In other words, you like zoning but only your type of zoning. You don't actually want to let the market decide anything.

My preference is more open zoning than most of the US allows. I don't want market anarchy.

Originally Posted by Malloric

Really, nothing is stopping places from doing away with parking minimums. Sacramento doesn't have any parking minimums downtown. Neither does Portland. In 1994 Seattle did away with parking minimums in urban centers and has expanded it since to urban villages. In addition, anything within 1/4 mile of a bus stop with where a bus stops every 15 minutes had its parking requirements reduced by 50%. Here's a map of the urban villages. All together, 36.5% of the city effectively has no parking minimums at all and much more than that has the 50% reduction.

Yes, nothing is stopping them from being less prescriptive...my suggestion was that they take advantage of that fact.

Originally Posted by Malloric

Of course, developers still build parking and parking is still the favorite strawman for why places are so damn expensive. I'm a bit skeptical that a parking garage makes an apartment in Portland rent for $500/mo more myself. That number seems high. On the other hand when I was in Belltown it was $400/mo to park in my building. Too rich for my blood but it's not like a spot ever opened up in the time I was there anyway so clearly people do want to spend $400/mo to park. I see people paying that kind of money for a parking spot and start thinking about how much money I could make with a parking garage... but then that would never pass design review in either Portland or Seattle, both of which have parking maximums in downtown that artificially increase the cost of parking.

It's easy for a parking space to cost $50,000 to develop, which can translate to well above that in retail price. $400 doesn't sound far off.

In Seattle, design review isn't the issue. Even if our land use code allowed single-use garages (it makes them very difficult or impossible), the economics don't work. In any high-demand area, land is far too expensive relative to the potential rates. With land often over $30,000,000 per acre, at 1,000 spaces per acre that's $30,000 per space just for the land.

Originally Posted by Malloric

Velo is, of course, within a urban village and thus has no parking requirements. Apparently they got the parking wrong and built too much of it and it's the damn car's fault. On the upside, since they built too much parking now there's more free bicycle parking which they didn't build enough of.

Not sure what you're saying here. Developers are getting pretty good at figuring out how much parking they need to avoid cutting rents. Often that means a small amount. And many buildings obviously don't do parking at all, which can be a huge savings.

[Katarina Witt]

^^You give developers way more credit than they deserve.

[mhays25]

I work for a general contractor (developers hire us) and part of my job for the last couple decades has been watching trends like this. I have a decent sense of how development works.

In your region most developers build tons of parking in new residential buildings even right in Denver's core, an anecdotally I've heard much of it doesn't fill up. In my region we build much less parking per unit, and developers have gotten better at it than you think.

[Malloric]

Originally Posted by mhays25

My preference is more open zoning than most of the US allows. I don't want market anarchy.

Actually, you just said the opposite. You want more closed zoning that prevents what you don't like (sprawl) as the choice is intolerable to you. I mean, that's fine but just come out and say it instead of all this beating around the bush. Zoning is highly local. Even places like LA, which is unfairly categorized as sprawl, have lots of neighborhoods with densities between 10,000-40,000. There's a smaller number above 40,000 but it's hard to call 10,000- 40,000 sprawl. It is to some people who want every place to look like Manhattan even if they say they don't but that's pretty high density. Zoning in LA might be preventing Manhattan levels of density but it's certainly not preventing 10-40k density levels. Those are abundant.

Yes, nothing is stopping them from being less prescriptive...my suggestion was that they take advantage of that fact.

The problem is people often don't like change. Even in progressive cities like Seattle there's a lot of push back against zoning for increased density. If you look at cities like San Francisco or DC where there's a lot of demand and zoning forces sprawl as development cannot occur most places, I'm more in agreement there. Where zoning and demand are at such great odds, I would say zoning is too prescriptive. Again, that's highly local. What's too prescriptive in San Francisco may not be at all in a suburb 30 miles away from San Francisco. A 40 foot ceiling height might work just fine there as there's very little demand for anything taller anyway. I mean, Houston's 42-story high-rise residential towers right next to two-story rowhouses is a little weird for most people. We're generally accustomed and supportive of highly prescriptive zoning that prevents things like that. While not total anarchy, Houston's far less prescriptive zoning is an oddity and results in atypical development.

And there's you're problem. While San Francisco is very liberal, environmentally conscious, and generally dislikes sprawl and all that jazz that doesn't mean they want or will tolerate development IN San Francisco. A lot of more sprawling areas have equal sentiment. People don't always like change and will fight to prevent. San Francisco is that to a tee. It may be liberal, environmentally conscious, and dislike sprawl but more than any of that it is NIMBY. Cornfields should be developed densely, but don't touch my neighborhood. Of course, they wouldn't live in a cornfield regardless of density though. People who want density usually want urban amenities which cornfields lack.

It's easy for a parking space to cost $50,000 to develop, which can translate to well above that in retail price. $400 doesn't sound far off.

Even at $50,000 and $6,000/yr in higher rent, that's still a pretty good ROI of 12% in Portland. Of course, $50,000 is also very high. The median cost of a parking space in a parking structure in Portland is $18,500, which is more like a 30% ROI which is great. But you can't just build a parking garage in either Portland or Seattle. There's reasons for that, of course, but the inability to build parking structures does distort the market. It's not even single-use. If a developer wanted to build excess parking in their underground garage, zoning also restricts or altogether prevents that as well. Again, there's reasons for it. Restricting parking to artificially increase the price is a great way of getting people out of cars which is the explicit goal of both Portland and Seattle. Now, they're not rabidly anti-car or anything. They just want to make it more difficult to drive in the downtown areas. Restricting parking to drive up cost is an excellent way of doing that.

Like I said though, I have trouble believing the $500/mo figure somewhere like Portland. It's high for Seattle and Portland is much cheaper to park in than Seattle. Really what both are trying to manage is congestion and using parking as the mechanism for setting "congestion" pricing. It's not bad zoning policy or anything. It's actually the opposite.

Not sure what you're saying here. Developers are getting pretty good at figuring out how much parking they need to avoid cutting rents. Often that means a small amount. And many buildings obviously don't do parking at all, which can be a huge savings.

At times. Even though there was no requirement for any parking, stuff like Velo in Seattle just built too much parking or alternatively over priced the parking. It's not the end of the world or anything. You always should have "too much" parking anyway. If the parking is under priced such that there isn't any parking, you aren't charging enough for it. My last apartment in Sacramento was that way. $35/mo for a parking space was clearly too little. Worked okay as there was abundant street parking. In a more urban neighborhood where that isn't the case it may have been. And of course there were parking minimums for that building that were met. I'm not sure if they just met the parking minimums (1.5 space per unit) or exceeded them. Either way, they didn't build enough parking. One of the reasons I picked that apartment despite its higher cost was other apartments in the area which also built insufficient parking were larger and in closer proximity and parking was more difficult. Having come from an apartment in Davis where I usually had to park half a mile from where I lived parking was a definite consideration. It's easier to park in Midtown Sacramento than many Davis neighborhoods as mostly it's students who park the cars and don't use them frequently. Now say you're a family in Davis who gets tired of all the student apartments overflow parking half a mile from their apartments taking up all the street parking all the time and you see why parking minimums are so hard to get rid of. Students generally don't care as they don't regularly drive anyway.

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by mhays25

I work for a general contractor (developers hire us) and part of my job for the last couple decades has been watching trends like this. I have a decent sense of how development works.

In your region most developers build tons of parking in new residential buildings even right in Denver's core, an anecdotally I've heard much of it doesn't fill up. In my region we build much less parking per unit, and developers have gotten better at it than you think.

You've "heard". Maybe you could provide some statistics?

[mhays25]

I'll defer to another board with initials that start with Sky and ends with page, which has a few good Denver development threads. There have been a number of parking discussions on the "downtown" thread especially. The Denver posters are pretty conservative on this topic, but they've pointed out cases where it turns out there was too much.

[mhays25]

Malloric, please point out where I've suggested eliminating the ability to build suburban formats where the ability currently exists. What I actually said was that those places should broaden their codes to allow urban and small-town formats.

Your parking garage cost figure doesn't account for urban neighborhoods with the related construction challenges and land costs.

The rest of your points are inconsistent and hard to dicipher.

[Plannedcities]

First of all, thanks so much for all of your comments. I loved hearing about your thoughts on density, influencing car usage with parking controls, and general per capita consumption. There is clearly some concern that cities are not even close to being sustainable (feels a bit like rearranging deck chairs sometimes, eh). I do think there is some nuanced differences between self-sufficient and sustainable that can help with these discussions but I don't want to get caught up in technicalities.

To take the discussion further I wanted to ask you want you think about developers and their approach to sustainability.

Originally Posted by Katarina Witt

I don't quite get this love affair with developers on this forum. Developers are in it to make the most money possible.

I have heard that some developers are reluctant to put sustainability into their development applications. One project that I know of took years to get the DA approved and it was a sustainable precinct project. It has been said that it is better to avoid the new and exciting because it takes longer and more convincing.

Do you think developers can or do get faster approvals if they commit to sustainability ratings within their project?

[IC_deLight]

Define "sustainability" in a development application.
This is a red herring.
Will they be generating their own power? No.
Will they be manufacturing their own goods? No.
Will they be growing and harvesting their own food? No.
This is nothing more than a marketing gimmick.