North Carolina lawmakers introduce bill targeting parking lots (WCCB)
“We don’t have an affordable parking crisis in America. We have an affordable housing crisis in America,” says Ryan Carter.
Carter is a Catawba Riverkeeper – and he’s had enough of the sprawling parking lots littered across the Queen City and the Tar Heel State.
House Bill 369 – the Parking Lot Reform & Modernization Act – is legislation that Carter shaped with the help of a bipartisan group of state representatives. It’s mainly aimed at reforming – or even ridding us of – parking lot minimums.
“Everything, including square footage of commercial real estate, has a parking lot minimum associated with it,” Carter explains.
Essentially, if you build in North Carolina, whether it’s an apartment, an office, or a mall, you are mandated to provide parking to handle the maximum vehicle traffic it brings in. It’s a good idea in theory, but it leads to sprawling lots that go largely unused for most of the year.
“We think [House Bill 369] is going to be one of the most critical bills for land use,” says Eric Zaverl with Sustain Charlotte. He says this proposal will help lower prices, too.
“It impacts business owners, especially small business owners and renters,” Zaverl explains, “A lot of apartments have to out in multi-million-dollar parking decks, and that charge and that money gets passed along to everybody who’s renting.”