300 Livingston Street
In traffic-clogged New York City, where parking spaces are coveted like the rarest of treasures, an excess of parking spaces might seem like an urban planner’s dream.
Yet city officials, developers and transit advocates say that in
Downtown Brooklyn, there is this most unusual of parking problems: There
is simply too much of it.
The issue, officials say, lies with the large garages that the
developers of new residential buildings have been required by zoning
rules to construct. But with 13 subway lines and 15 bus routes in the
area, many new residents choose to leave their cars behind, meaning the
garages sit half-empty and take up precious space.
“People are choosing to live in Downtown Brooklyn because of the great
access to the public transit network that they find there,” said Tucker
Reed, the president of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. “The last thing we need to be doing is developing more parking.”
The city is now seeking to rein in what it sees as a glut of parking. On Monday, a City Council panel is scheduled to consider
new zoning regulations that would reduce how many parking spaces must
be built with new residential developments in Downtown Brooklyn, and
allow developers who already have excess parking to reclaim the unneeded
space for other uses. (Because there are so many subway tunnels and
other infrastructure in that part of Brooklyn, many of the garages are
above ground, making it easier to use the space for something else.)
Residents in Downtown Brooklyn are likelier than those in many other
neighborhoods to go car-free: 22 percent of households in the
neighborhood own cars, according to the Census Bureau, compared with 45
percent for the city over all.
In making the case for reducing the parking requirements, the city’s Planning Department cited the Avalon Fort Greene,
a high-rise on Gold Street with more than 600 units. Under the current
rules, the building was required to have more than 250 parking spaces,
but the city said barely one-third of them were being used.
Paul Steely White, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives,
said residents moving into the area, particularly younger ones, wanted
nothing of the “car-oriented suburban lifestyle of their parents.” He
called the proposed changes a step in the right direction by city
officials.
“We hope they go even further to tip the balance even more in favor of
transit, walking and, increasingly, bicycling,” Mr. White said.
Under current rules, developers of new residential buildings in Downtown
Brooklyn must provide parking spaces for at least 40 percent of
households. The minimum parking requirement would drop to 20 percent
under the new rules, and there would be no requirement to build parking
with subsidized housing units, a move that supporters said would reduce
the cost of building such units.
The proposed rules were approved by the City Planning Commission last month, and they will go before the Council’s Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises on Monday.
Councilwoman Letitia James of Brooklyn said there was no question that
Downtown Brooklyn was a “transit-oriented community.” But she said she
was concerned that parking could become more difficult to find because
of the opening of the Barclays Center, and she added that she was not
convinced it was a good idea to allow developers to get rid of excess
parking they had already built.
“They would turn it into more luxury housing,” Ms. James said,
suggesting that it was naïve to think developers would volunteer to turn
their extra parking into subsidized housing or a community space.
In his review of the city’s proposal, the Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz,
called for the zoning rules to be adjusted not only to reduce the
requirement for automobile parking, but also to increase the
requirements for providing bicycle parking by 50 percent.
Mr. Markowitz said
his proposal demonstrated the wrongheadedness of “erroneous claims from
critics that my office doesn’t advocate enough for the bicycle
community.” But the Planning Commission concluded that requiring
additional bicycle parking was beyond the scope of the zoning changes
that were being considered.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/nyregion/seeking-to-rein-in-excess-parking-in-downtown-brooklyn.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=1&
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