Proposal includes reduced minimum requirements
The Beacon City Council is scheduled to continue a public hearing on Monday (April 15) on a proposal to revise parking requirements for new developments and substantial reconstructions and, in some areas, eliminate a minimum requirement.
The hearing began in January and has been postponed twice. The council and Planning Board reviewed a new draft of the law this week; on Monday, council members will decide whether to hold the hearing or delay it to refine the proposal.
As it stands, the law would divide the city into two categories: “core” walkable areas (the Main Street, linkage, waterfront development and transitional zones) and outlying zones, including residential, industrial, general business, the Fishkill Creek development and waterfront park districts.
The proposal would eliminate minimum off-street parking requirements in the core areas and replace them with maximums; the outlying zones would have reduced minimums, with maximum requirements added.
For example, residential structures in the core would be restricted to one parking space per dwelling unit. In the outlying areas, residential units would need one to three spaces per unit. Parking for other uses, such as commercial, retail and industrial buildings, would be based on floor area calculations. Where only maximums are identified, the Planning Board may approve fewer spaces for a project based on factors such as parcel size, the proposed use and walkable access to public transit.
The city may allow developers who cannot provide the required spaces to pay for an exemption, but that option is not part of the current draft.
More than 200 municipalities nationwide, including Hudson and Kingston, have dropped minimum parking requirements. In Beacon, where the standards have been largely unchanged since the 1960s, proponents say the law will encourage walking and biking and bring down housing costs.
The City Council and Planning Board asked a planning consultant this week how to measure the law’s effectiveness. It may not be seen in the cost of housing, said Natalie Quinn, who called parking “one piece of this larger issue.” But, Quinn said, the city could see an increase in the number of units being built. “That’s a direct correlation that I expect to see,” she said.
Len Warner, a Planning Board member, said the city should create a database of its public parking lots and track which nearby developments, particularly on Main Street, use them. That and “real-time utilization data” would help calculate whether there is sufficient public parking to withstand reduced or eliminated minimums.
Kevin Byrne, who is also on the Planning Board, noted that Cold Spring began enforcing weekend metered parking on Main Street on April 5 and now requires residential permits on 11 core streets on weekends and holidays. “One of the best ways to compare and contrast is to look at the real results of places that are similar to us,” he said.
“What we’ve seen in other comparable cities is that the world does not end when you switch from [parking] minimums to maximums,” Quinn said. “There’s still so many reasons for developments to want to provide the parking that they need, and there’s available municipal parking or other options for folks getting around.”
Citing lower housing costs and vehicle usage, Council Member Jeff Domanski said Monday that the law, if adopted, should be evaluated to “capture the user experience” and make sure it is working as intended. He suggested surveying lower-income residents to see if the regulations make it challenging to have a car in Beacon.
Like Quinn, Mayor Lee Kyriacou said the city may not see changes in housing costs. However, “it’s environmentally stupid for us to require as much parking as our requirements from the ’60s did,” he said.
Domanski responded: “But you could drive people into habits that countervail the environmental impact you’re trying to have.”
Housing application
City officials have asked New York State to designate Beacon a “pro-housing community,” a certification that gives municipalities priority consideration for up to $650 million in funding. Communities must have increased their housing stock by 1 percent in the last year and 3 percent over the last three years; Beacon’s rose by 1.7 percent from a year ago and 3.66 percent in the past three, Quinn said.
Do you know if it’s possible to join this meeting virtually or if there is an email address we can send comments? I looked on the Beacon City website but can’t find this info.
You can join the meetings on Zoom. Unfortunately, they don’t make it easily accessible on the municipal website. If you want to join a meeting via Zoom, email the mayor’s assistant at least a few days before, requesting the link.
What the City Council needs to keep in mind is that cars are not going away, and as the city develops and the more property values increase, so will the number and size of cars. That’s why it’s important that going forward any parking plan that’s codified needs to make sure that the capital costs and any maintenance costs of parking for multifamily residential and commercial properties anywhere in town needs to be covered by the developers and the commercial owners of those properties only. They can’t be allowed to offload their parking responsibility, the cost of doing business, onto the residents of the city.
Landlords and commercial property owners already have the residents of the city covering capital and maintenance costs for a sizable percentage of their parking with the public parking lots and overspill on residential streets. We’ve paid for the initial capital cost of providing those public lots and streets, and we continue to provide paving, salting, plowing and cleaning of the lots and streets. While every LLC and tax-evading property owning entity is repeatedly given tax breaks in our city every year.