Townhouses without Parking?

Howell Lofts is our first new townhouse designed using the new multi-family code. It's a quirky little infill project that packs a lot of ambition onto a very small site. As such its been a great opportunity to prototype some new ideas that I'd been working on during the great recession, waiting for an opportunity to try them out.

Big idea #1 - Alternative Parking:

The new multi-family code removes mandatory parking requirements in Urban Villages and allows developers to provide whatever amount they deem appropriate. In our case, this flexibility allowed us to do some really great things with our planning that improved the project immensely.

First things first - we decided to design the project around a pedestrian oriented facade & provide only as many parking spaces as we could without massing up the streetscape of the project. The result is a project with generous entry courtyards where parking stalls would have been if 1:1 parking was provided.

The project provides two parking spaces for four units. While this makes for a great streetscape, the neighbors weren't exactly delighted to hear that we were under-parking the project, and frankly, the sales team wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea of going to market with units that didn't have dedicated parking. So, we started asking around and discovered that the Union Gospel Mission next door had a parking lot that was under-utilized. So we negotiated a lease with UGM to rent a couple of parking spaces in their lot.

Its a win-win-win scenario where UGM gets income to help with their programs, we get dedicated parking that helps to sell the units and the neighbors get our cars off the street, where parking is already scarce.

We have another townhouse project in the works that provides three parking spaces for five units. While we expect that buyers will pay a bit less for units without parking, they are also cheaper to build and have more usable space.  We're also discovering that projects that are willing to park at a lower ratio than 1:1 are often able to fit in an extra unit or two. On a small infill project this can make huge difference to the bottom line.

Over the next year, were going to see several "no parking" townhouses come to market & we'll be watching carefully to see how these projects sell in comparison to traditional townhouses with 1:1 parking.