Stone Arch Village, at 835 court St., is home to 33 households of people 55 and up. Fewer than half of those residents own a vehicle, but the city’s current zoning code requires the building to have 45 parking spaces. (Photo by Sophia Keshmiri, Keene Sentinel)
There’s a parking lot on Court Street that’s usually half empty. That property belongs to Keene Housing and though the agency’s executive director thinks it could be a site for additional housing, the parking lot is a zoning requirement.
Stone Arch Village Senior Housing, at 835 court St., is home to 33, 55-plus households, according to the Keene Housing website. Few of those residents own a vehicle, but because of zoning requirements, the building must have that extra parking. There are 45 parking spaces for residents according to data the organization collected one to two years ago, and only about 40 percent of those spaces are used.
“It’s a perfect example of how parking minimums can have a bit of a perverse effect on the housing that gets built,” Keene Housing Executive Director Josh Meehan said.
Meehan pointed out the scarcely used lot during a Jan. 16 public hearing in City Hall on an ordinance that would reduce parking requirements for housing in some areas of Keene from two spots per unit to one.
Currently, no parking spaces are required when developers construct residential buildings in the heart of downtown, one space is required per unit for some places and two per unit are required for most of the Elm City.
Keene is not alone in these discussions. As communities across the country grapple with the housing shortage, reducing parking requirements is one way experts say municipalities can encourage housing development, and it’s one way officials have tried to address the unfolding crisis.
The housing market is currently characterized by too little housing that’s more expensive than many can afford. In the Elm City, 1,400 new units of housing are needed in the next decade, a housing needs assessment conducted for Keene found.
And Keene Housing has a waitlist of roughly 2,000 households for its controlled apartments.
“What we find is that in our properties that are designated for seniors or people with disabilities, most folks often don’t have a car at all,” Meehan said.
“And if they do, they certainly typically don’t have more than a single car household. So the notion that you would be required to build housing for seniors or folks with disabilities and required one and a half or two parking spaces, it’s just not a very good use of limited space that we have.”
Councilors will consider the proposal at a future meeting.
One of the reasons the Keene Community Development Department proposed the reduction in citywide parking requirements last November was to spur more housing development in the Elm City. Senior Planner Mari Brunner said the goal is to better align the supply of parking with the demand.
If city councilors adopt the ordinance, the requirement would be reduced to one parking space per residential unit, or lower in specific cases, barring the heart of downtown, where there will still be no requirements for parking spaces, Brunner said.
Reducing parking requirements is one way experts say municipalities can encourage housing development, and it’s one way officials have tried to address the unfolding crisis.
“By reducing the parking requirement, it’s reducing the cost for the developer. It’s also freeing up more space on the land for more units to get filled,” Brunner said.
Minimum parking requirements can slow and even prevent much-needed housing development in more ways than one, according to Ivy Vann, owner of Peterborough-based Ivy Vann Town Planning and Urban Design. These requirements can prevent development in existing neighborhoods, and taking advantage of existing infrastructure in the process.
“Most of the lots in most of the neighborhoods are bigger than they need to be, or the building is bigger, or there’s room for an accessory dwelling unit,” she said.
The cost of putting in a parking lot to meet requirements for a multifamily housing unit can deter developers from building because of the financial implications. A developer may opt to build a single family home to avoid the issue altogether.
Vann thinks the possible change in Keene is a good step, but that the city could take it even further. She is adamant that municipalities should eliminate all of their parking requirements.
Mari Brunner noted there were several proponents of the change who agree with Vann. However, Brunner said officials weren’t in favor of this idea.
“There is a lot of debate in the planning field about parking requirements,” she said. “I do think that there’s a lot of merit to the argument that the parking requirements that are in communities are not necessarily always right sized … but in areas where there is no public transportation and there are no on street or public parking, I do believe it does make sense to have parking requirements.”
Vann says eliminating all parking requirements won’t result in too few parking spaces. She said the market will naturally produce the right amount of parking.
“If I am a developer and I am going to build a thing and I need to sell it or rent it, I have to provide enough parking for the market,” she explained.
Parking maximums
Vann added that instead of requiring parking space minimums, some municipalities have put a cap on the number of parking spaces developers can add. “It’s a, ‘we don’t care if you think you need 400 parking places. We don’t want you to build them because that’s too many.’”
Dover, a seacoast community, changed its city parking policy in 2014 to allow a maximum of 1.65 parking spaces per unit in downtown, and 1.9 spaces for multifamily housing outside of downtown.
Christopher Parker, the deputy city manager of development and strategic initiatives there, said the policy has aligned the amount of parking with the need. In downtown, he said there are generally fewer spaces than the maximum.
“I certainly think that when you create regulations that require excess parking, then you take land that could be used for housing or other uses, and you you create a barrier to that by adding costs that are not recovered by a developer or a property owner,” he said.
“Parking is the most inefficient use of land … if you can more appropriately align your parking regulations with the actual needs of the market, then that’s a win-win.”
Meehan, for his part, can see a future where the vacant parking lot on Court Street could become the site of more affordable housing, if zoning allows it.
Another building could help the agency make a dent in its waiting list. As of 2023, the wait time for a one-unit space at Stone Arch Village was 8 years, according to Keene Housing.
“There’s a lesson learned there,” Meehan said.
“We need to be thoughtful about maximizing opportunities where they set themselves, certainly not, you know, paving, putting up pavement in places where there could just as easily and more helpfully, be housing.”
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