THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 10, 1994 TAG: 9406090181
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY GERALD A. PORTERFIELD
DATELINE: 940610 LENGTH: Medium
The object of my ire is commercial parking, the kind located in front of your local shopping center. Specifically, the size of those parking areas. Have you noticed how large they've become?
{REST} Back when all shopping centers were ``local'' shopping centers, it was possible actually to read the store signs from the street and to drive to the front of the store of your choice. A shopping trip today will more likely find you being swept from a collector street into a vortex of dual or triple turn lanes and abruptly deposited into a 10- or 20-acre, 1,000-to 2,000-car lot, where during mid-summer the temperatures can seem to rival those in the Sahara Desert.
You find yourself staring squarely at one of those new shopping inventions known as an Outlet Mall, a Value Mall, a Power Center, a Warehouse Club or - this is my favorite - a Category Killer.
Whatever the name, they are all giant commercial structures completely beyond human scale, sitting 800 to 1,000 feet or more off the road with a parking lot usually no more than half full. In fact, a recent study in southern California revealed that peak occupancy of five major centers selected at random ranged from 43 percent to 69 percent, with an average of 51 percent. A similar Urban Land Institute study had almost identical results: twice as much parking as was used. If you don't believe it, try your own windshield survey; the results will be the same.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that either the municipalities are requiring too much parking or the commercial developers are demanding too many spaces. This overbuilding results in increased surface runoff, which requires more and larger stormwater management areas to ensure water quality.
The wasted asphalt is not only expensive to the developer; it is wasteful of valuable commercial land area which could be put to a more productive use or, in its elimination, help curb urban sprawl.
Most commercial zoning requires a minimum of 5 to 5.5 spaces for every 1,000 square feet of gross leasable area. However, most of these specialty megacenters are demanding 7 to 8 spaces per 1,000 square feet. This sounds innocent enough but in actuality is an increase of 40 percent to 50 percent over what would normally be required in your ``local'' shopping center.
How do these centers get such a drastic increase? They simply ask for it. Most zoning codes specify only a minimum number of spaces; usually there is no limit to the maximum.
Now, there are indeed peak times when these areas are full or nearly so. But when this time is compared to the time when the lot is significantly less than full, the absurdity of this overdesigning comes to light.
Again, according to the ULI, most parking lots are designed to satisfy all but the peak 10 hours during the course of the year. If we assume that most commercial space is open for 12 hours a day, six days a week, then these parking areas are full only 0.25 percent of the time or less. Said another way, 99.75 percent of the time they are underutilized.
I could go on to discuss how most people will not park farther than 300 to 400 feet away from the building or how the fear of crime in these large lots is increasing the underutilization of them.
We as members of the development industry must recognize our responsibility to the greater community and design more functional and hospitable commercial environments than we have.
As the consuming public, we must vote with our dollars and reward those good examples of commercial design.
And as citizens, we must require of our elected, appointed and hired officials a higher degree of design scrutiny so that we may all enjoy better shopping environments.
by CNB