Zoning Changes in Depth: DC's New Parking Requirements

• January 26th 2016

by Nena Perry-Brown

The DC Zoning Commission unanimously approved the city’s long-debated zoning changes two weeks ago. UrbanTurf recently started taking a closer look at the changes that are of most interest to our readership. We continue our exploration of these changes today with a closer look at the revised parking regulations.

The revisions that will go into effect in September are intended to simplify current parking requirements. Below are bullet points that highlight some of the changes:

• One parking space is currently allotted per single-family dwelling or per flat in a two-family dwelling, and those regulations will not change.
• Required spaces for multi-family dwellings, currently one space for one unit to four unit buildings, depending on zone designation, will change to one space per three units. For retail, requirements will simply be one parking space per 750 square feet of retail space.
• The new regulations allow a 50 percent reduction in parking requirements for commercial or mixed-use buildings provided that the buildings are within a half-mile of a Metro station or a quarter-mile from a streetcar line or “priority bus corridor.” The buildings must be on a street where participation in the city’s Residential Parking Permit program is not allowed.

(If all other pertinent regulations are observed, parking spaces can be counted toward the requirement if they are shared-use based on the site, are off-site but within 600 feet, or are car-share spaces. For sites which require more than 20 parking spaces, creating twice the needed number of spots will warrant taking measures to mitigate negative environmental impact.)

• Parking will not be required for most new downtown buildings. However, new buildings in areas adjacent to the West End neighborhood will require a certain amount of parking based on the building use.
• Hotels larger than 3,000 square feet will require one space per 2,000 square feet; current regulations account for number of rooms, zone, and square footage of function space.

In case you missed it, here is UrbanTurf’s article on changes to accessory apartments from last week.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/a_closer_look_at_zoning_changes_parking/10799.