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Archive for the ‘Parking’ Category

Appeal to Add More Parking at Promenade Rejected by Dublin City Council

Promenade

This past Tuesday night, the Dublin City Council rejected the appeal of a resident to add additional parking at the Promenade by a vote of 2 to 0 with Councilmembers Kasie Hildenbrand and Kevin Hart rejecting the appeal and Councilmember Kate Ann Scholz abstaining. By rejecting the appeal, the City Council affirmed the decision made by the Planning Commission on December 9th to grant the developer a Conditional Use Permit to provide 500 parking spaces vs. the 541 parking spaces required by Dublin’s Zoning Ordinance based on the adoption of the Shared Parking assumption.

The appeal was filed by a resident based on the principle that the Shared Parking study approved by the Planning Commission to reduce the number of required parking spaces did not account for the street parking shortage at the surrounding Dublin Ranch Villages and that all 541 parking spaces would have been required in the study if the traffic consultant had incorporated the assumption that visitors of the Promenade will likely choose street parking along Finnian Way in favor of parking inside the Promenade parking garage. As a compromise, the resident suggested that the City move forward with the Promenade project only if the developer agreed to put up a $5M bond as collateral in the event that an additional level of parking is eventually required.

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Responsible City Planning

Dublin Ranch VillagesOn December 9, 2008, the Planning Commission unanimously approved the Conditional Use Permit (CUP) application by Charter Properties to adopt the Shared Parking model for calculating the required number of parking spaces at Phase I of the Promenade. Charter Properties was not responsible for the poor planning of the ill-conceived parking arrangement at Dublin Ranch Villages, so it is definitely not obligated to resolve a problem that cannot be fixed by a garage alone. All that the nearby residents are requesting is for adequate parking as defined by Dublin’s Zoning Ordinance to be provided, so Phase I at the Promenade does not exacerbate the parking crisis that neither the City nor the HOAs have the political will or sufficient jurisdiction to confront directly. Dublin has good standards; we just need to be better about enforcing them. Given the parking realities at Dublin Ranch Villages, allocating at least 541 parking spaces as mandated by code is not only the responsible way to start the Promenade but also in the best interest of the Promenade tenants, nearby residents, and, most importantly, all of Dublin. If the City allows one developer to disregard Dublin’s Zoning Ordinance in an area with known parking shortage, it will send the wrong message to other developers with similar mixed-use projects elsewhere in Dublin. Once this bad precedent is set, those other developers can reasonably demand the City to relax its parking requirement for their projects and challenge the City in court should the City refuse. The City of Dublin cannot afford to spread this parking nightmare beyond Dublin Ranch Villages.

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Dublin Ranch Villages Parking Challenge

Dublin Ranch VillagesOn December 9, 2008, the Planning Commission unanimously approved the Conditional Use Permit (CUP) application by Charter Properties to adopt the Shared Parking model for calculating the required number of parking spaces at Phase I of the Promenade. At the time, the majority of the Planning Commission felt that the extreme parking shortage at Dublin Ranch Villages is brought on by the residents alone, but that assessment is incomplete at best. While residents who do not park their cars in the garages are partly to blame, the fact that the developers built up to the maximum of a given density range without regard for basic human behavior also contributes to the challenge. Many of the floorplans in Dublin Ranch Villages feature tandem garages. In a two-car household with a tandem garage, the first person to leave home is usually the first person to come home. Unless both drivers depart at the same time, the first person to take off will invariably park on the street. As the developers came up with innovative designs like tandem garages to cram more units into their high-density projects, they also converted land that should have been reserved for surface-level parking to subdivisions with the City’s blessing. According to former Councilman George Zika, allowing developers to count street parking towards the number of visitor parking as required by Dublin’s Zoning Ordinance is one of the reasons for the “absolutely ludicrous” parking crisis in Dublin Ranch Villages.

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