A Tale of Two Shops
Why parking ratio requirements don't make senseToday I want to take a look at two local businesses, and see what they can teach us about the reality of parking and the ability of parking ordinances to address parking supply and demand. The two business are both located on West Alabama St., near the intersection of West Alabama and Hazard. My home is within a few blocks of there, so I walk or drive past these businesses almost every day.
The first business is a small retail center which contains an art gallery, a candy store, and one of my favorite Houston institutions: the Chocolate Bar. The second business is Erick’s Auto Repair shop, which is exactly what it sounds like. The two businesses are as different in character as they are in the lesson they can teach us.
Shop Number One
First, lets take a look at the retail center. This center is about 110′ wide and 60′ deep, and the building takes up most of its lot. Half the center (3,300 square feet) would be classified as retail (COH Requirement: 4 parking spaces per 1000 square feet), and the other half would be classified as a restaurant (COH Requirement: 8 parking spaces per 1000 feet). All together this building is required by the City of Houston to have 40 parking spaces.
The building has 8 parking spaces, a deficit of 32 spaces. You’d think that this would mean the parking situation was dire — and yet, the parking lot is rarely full. Consider the photo below.
The Chocolate Bar - 32 spaces less than required by the City of Houston
I took this picture at about 5:30 PM on a weekday. According to the City of Houston, this should be peak parking demand for a restaurant. However, as you can see there are only 3 cars parked in the center, and about a minute after I took this picture one of them drove away.
Are these businesses failing, then? Quite the contrary. The Chocolate Bar is very popular, and draws large crowds that literally barely fit inside the building. The peak of activity occurs in the late evenings, especially on weekends – which makes sense as the they primarily serves desserts.
Still, even during the peak crowds on Friday and Saturday evenings, the parking lot is rarely full. Further, the crowd isn’t heavily spilling onto nearby streets. There’s no parking allowed on West Alabama, and the only side street (Driscoll) is not over-congested with on-street parking.
Shop Number Two
Now let’s look at Erick’s Auto Repair. Erick’s is a small auto repair shop at the northeast corner of Alabama and Hazard. It’s roughly 60’ x 35’, or 2100 square feet. The City of Houston has its own category for auto repair shops, and it requires they provide 5 parking spaces per 1000 square feet of floor area. Erick’s, therefore, is only required to provide 10 parking spaces. However, Erick’s has converted a large area behind their building as well as most of the space in front and to the side for parking spaces – and they double park the cars.
Erick's Auto Repair
The Rear Parking at Erick's
So Erick’s has a surplus of 20 parking spaces more than the City requires. That should mean there’s an abundance of empty parking space, right? But as we saw in the picture above, there isn’t – they use every inch of their lot, and then some. Consider the pictures below.
Spillover Parking at Erick's
Parking from Erick's lining down Hazard Street
Erick’s makes a habit of parking cars up and down Hazard Street, to the point that there’s rarely an available space on Hazard while the shop is open. Not only do they park cars on the street, but they routinely block the driveways of the Condo building behind the shop, as well as the Chinese Antique store across Hazard Street (photo below). Most interesting of all, they frequently send mechanics to work on the cars while they are parked on the street!
Erick's making use of the neighboring Antique Store
This raises an interesting question. The street is public, but does that mean it’s acceptable to conduct one’s business within the right of way? I mean, if I wanted to set up cones and block off the outermost lane on Westheimer to put up a tent and sell stuff, do you think the City would let me?
Remember that this business is accommodating about 3 times as many cars on their property as the city says they are required to.
Lessons Learned
I hope by now the point I’m trying to illustrate is clear. The City does not know how much parking any particular business or residence really needs. That said, remember two of the cities assumptions going in to this ordinance review:
- The parking ratios (ie. X parking spaces per 1000 square feet of a given land use) aren’t necessarily working.
- To fix them, the City believes a greater number of more specific requirements are called for.
If you recall, the example Marlene Gaffrick gave in the parking meeting I attended was that the City might need to differentiate between “really popular” restaurants and “smaller” restaurants.
Should the City also differentiate between “really popular” mechanics and “less popular” mechanics? After all, as Erick’s Auto Repair clearly demonstrates, the City’s requirement doesn’t even come close to keeping all the parking generated by their shop on-site.
If we’re going to make that kind of distinction between businesses, what about residents? I mean, “really popular” people have more guests than “less popular” people. Should popular people be required to provide extra driveway spaces for all their guests? That would certainly alleviate the congestion associated with house parties! Let’s start a petition!!
If that last example sounds like a stretch, just look around the nation and observe some of the unusual parking regulations that other cities have. We’re not that far away from that kind of stuff, folks.
Remember that we already have requirements broken down into 69 different categories of land-use. Quick, here’s a test: try to make a list of 69 different kinds of land use. Seriously, try it. If you can make it to 70, send me your list and I’ll post it here along with a hearty congratulations.
Wrap-Up
The critical takeaway here is that parking ratios cannot and do not work. Even if we create 69,000 categories, it is not possible for anyone to predict all the subtle nuances from one business or residence to the next, and without taking those into account we cannot know with any accuracy what the need for parking will be at that particular site.
Now, this post has already gotten pretty long, so I’m going to stop here for today. I hope this local example has been informative, and that you’ll check back over the next few days. Today I hope I’ve shown why the government won’t be able to adequately control parking supply – in the next installment I’ll discuss how the market is able to do handle it just fine.
As always I look forward to your comments!
Categories: featured, move
Tags: City of Houston, economy, Erick's Auto Shop, free market, Houston, ordinances, parking ordinances, regulations, The Chocolate Bar, The Problem with Parking Ordinances
Share:
12 Comments
Permalink
Great series.
Question about the parking regulations; what happens if the building changes hands? I mean, what if the auto shop sold to say, a restaurant (which apparently requires more parking spaces than auto shops)? If they don’t get a variance, are the new owners obliged to renovate the property to make room for the additional required parking?
Permalink
Regardless of whether or not the ownership changes, if the USE of the building changes the parking requirements would need to be met in order to get a building permit or certificate of occupancy. So new owners converting the auto shop to a restaurant would absolutely be required to meet the parking regs.
This requirement is in fact the biggest reason why so many downtowns across the nation became largely vacant from 1950-1990. In order to change their business, a new owner would have to also buy the building next door and tear it down to become parking. Initially that wasn’t feasible as the land values were too high, so things became static.
As you know, when things get ‘stuck’ for too long, unable to adapt to the market, they die. So as the downtown shops began to die off it became easier to bulldoze them to make room for new office towers and parking garages etc, but the street life died off as the old buildings that were pedestrian-oriented slowly went away and the new buildings presented only a fortified wall to the street.
Permalink
You must be going by the chocolate shop on the rare occasions when it isn’t busy.
Every time I go by, the parking spots are full, and traffic is frequently blocked while some people inevitably wait in the street with blinkers on while existing customers try to maneuver out of the tight spaces. I suspect the owners would concede they have a parking problem, although they probably don’t want to draw attention to that fact lest some city or urban planner arrive to “help” them with their problem (usually such “help” involves people who don’t know much about business significantly raising costs for the small business owner).
Permalink
Kevin,
That’s interesting. I believe you, and I definitely have seen occasions where the parking lot was full. That said, I live within a couple blocks of there and go there with my wife and our friends very frequently. We do see the lot full on occasion, but most of the time we go there’s at least one or two empty spaces. We always walk, though…
Still – even when the parking lot is full, the Chocolate Bar is packed with far more people than could arrive in 8 cars. So my point remains, the business has enough parking to be profitable. Whether they would be able to do more business if they had more parking, I don’t know.
The important idea here is that small businesses should not be forced to provide more parking than is physically and/or financially possible on their property, as those requirements would often preclude them from doing business at all, and if they can operate with less parking then they should be allowed to. I can tell you this: if the City forced the Chocolate Bar to come up to code, the Chocolate Bar would be forced out of business. They could barely fit 40 parking spaces on that entire lot, even after demolishing the building. Of course, then it would be a moot point, as there would be no more Chocolate Bar to require the parking…
Permalink
I’ve been to the chocolate shop many times, and have always gotten a space in their lot (though sometimes the last one).
Your point that the city doesn’t know what the parking requirements are is spot-on. Believe it or not, people do walk to businesses in their neighborhood. I’m reminded of the ridiculousness of Midtown, where in a supposedly urban area business owners are required to provide lots of parking, wasting valuable space for businesses which will to a large degree be patronized by people who live within a 15 minute walk of the front door.
In more congested cities (and cities which Houstonians would claim are over-regulated) there often are no rules. If you are opening a restaurant in a place where there’s no parking, you contract with a valet to park cars for you. Or, you don’t, and people come to your restaurant understanding that it’s a in a congested neighborhood and if they drive their cars there, they have to find somewhere to put them.
It is, I am pretty sure, illegal to work on a car on a public street, and if the mechanic is blocking driveways, the answer is enforcement and tow trucks.
Permalink
I have no problem with the Chocolate Bar except for their (and Calico Corners) dumpsters. However, Ericks is a pain in the arse.
It’s almost impassable along Hazard and once you finally make your way to W. Alabama it’s impossible to see oncoming traffic because of all the cars parked there. Get rid of it, its time is over.
Permalink
Regarding the Chocolate Bar on W Alabama, maybe the situation has improved now that they’ve opened another branch in Rice Village, but I have rarely had a pleasant experience there, especially since they expanded.
I’ve parked near the dumpsters across the street on Driscoll, I’ve parked on Driscoll itself, I’ve parked back on Sul Ross, I’ve parked in the small lot of the business just to the East, and so on. It’s a minority of the time that I have parked in their lot. There has been at least one occasion that I’ve left without parking.
On those occasions when I do manage to get a spot, it’s very difficult to maneuver back into traffic. I haven’t been there in a year or so — my schedule is not what it once was — but I have been going there for almost ten years. I remember when it was a single-slot unit in that strip mall, and people would be crammed up in the corner, waiting in line.
Maybe in the old days we had a better chance of parking, but after the expansion it seems to me like it went from bad to disaster. Not that parking in Rice Village is much better, but that’s another story.
Finally, it may only be a small window of space when the parking is bad — weekend nights after the dinner hour — and 95% of the rest of the time it’s not that bad. Since it’s always a weekend and/or after-dinner spot for me, I can’t say I know what parking is like at other times.
As to Erick’s, I don’t understand the comparison. The Erick’s situation doesn’t describe “parking” as such, does it? Isn’t “parking” just the temporary space a customer receives as they patronize your business, to be released when they leave?
I think you’re describing the amount of space the business requires to conduct its services per-se, like “floor space” or “warehouse space.” Maybe there’s a specific term of art for the amount of space a car-related establishment requires for conducting its business, but I don’t think it’s fair to call it “parking.” Am I seeing this wrong?
For example, when I drop off a car, and my wife accompanies me in her own car, to drive me back home, and later again to pick up my car, isn’t my wife doing the “parking,” while I’m there to leave my car for service?
Parking seems like it describes a temporary slot to hold a car while a customer is still on site, not a slot to hold a piece of service inventory. If Erick’s is conducting business on side streets, then they’re conducting business on side streets. I wouldn’t say they have a “parking” problem, but a floor-space (?) problem.
Contrast this with Demo’s in the Rice area, which has at least two holding lots that I’m aware of, and possibly even three or four. There are a few barbed-wire-fenced lots in various spaces around the main garage buildings. They don’t appear to require spillage into the streets — and perhaps the folks of Rice Village would have a cow if they even tried.
Permalink
JV: Parking is typically defined simply as automobile storage space. Demo’s holding lots do – from the city’s perspective – constitute parking. There is no requirement that long-term vehicle storage and short-term vehicle storage be separated.
Consider your standard “Discount Tire,” you park in the front, give them your keys – and then leave or stay your car waits in the front parking lot for its turn, and when they’re done with it they put it back in the front parking lot.
So, while you’re absolutely correct that the cars are accumulating at the two shops for different reasons and different durations, from the perspective of the city ordinance there is no distinction.
That – in and of itself – proves the point I’m trying to make. The city cannot, does not, and will not ever be able to fully accommodate every unique type of ‘vehicle storage’ need throughout the millions of unique properties in Houston. But if they charged for on-street parking in every place where it was in high demand, many of the negative vehicle storage impacts (Hazard Street clogged up with cars from Ericks – AND people not being able to find a parking space near the Chocolate Bar) would be dramatically reduced.
First, Erick’s would have to do the math and see whether they could afford to pay the meters all day to use up all the parking on Hazard for vehicle storage. If they can afford it, so be it. If they can’t, they would have to either accept fewer customers, expand their on-site storage, or remove many of the ‘junker’ cars that they have had sitting in their main holding lot for a long, long time in order to make room for their ongoing business.
Second, residential visitors would be more likely to park in driveways instead of on-street, meaning more on-street spaces near commercial intersections (ie. where the Chocolate Bar is) would be regularly available.
But, also, because even a small charge dramatically changes people’s behavior, the number of people walking or carpooling to the Chocolate Bar would likely increase, meaning the store could maintain its business while its parking ‘need’ decreased.
Permalink
Fascinating series. I look forward to the next installment.
Permalink
Your picture makes the Chocolate Bar look so nice. How about including the dumpster on the side that we have to see every time we drive out on Driscoll to West Alabama. They fenced it so you do not see it from West Alabama, but on Driscoll, you have to drive between their dumpster and Calico Corner’s dumpster. Looks like a dump! Guess I need to take that picture and post it here…
Permalink
Feel free to send a pic! You should be able to post it using an
![]()
Permalink
J.V., whats wrong with the parking in Rice Village? I would argue that Rice Village is a great example of plenty of parking with reasonable density. Unless you’re demanding to park right in front of a particular business, Rice Village has enough parking but is still very walkable/bikeable