City planning staff told the Board of Zoning Adjustments that they will ask City Council to adopt an ordinance eliminating minimum off-street parking requirements citywide and to make a series of related changes to on-street management and transportation-demand-management rules.

Why it matters: Minimum parking requirements shape how neighborhoods are built, influence housing costs and vehicle travel, and affect the availability of on-street parking. The proposed changes — part of the city’s Access Management and Parking Strategy (AMPS) work program — would apply to new development and redevelopment and implement council direction in the wake of a Colorado legislative bill affecting local parking rules.

Key points from staff: Lisa Hood, principal city planner, summarized the package and said the city intends to present two ordinances (off-street and on-street parking) to council in early June, with the TDM ordinance to follow. Hood said the state law discussed in the meeting (referred to by staff as House Bill 24‑1304) restricts local minimums for specific land uses in defined transit-service areas and that the city’s map shows the state’s transit-service area covers roughly 77% of Boulder parcels; council directed staff to pursue citywide changes rather than create a patchwork of different rules inside and outside the state-defined area.

Hood said the proposed land-use ordinance would remove minimum off-street parking ratios from the zoning code and would also simplify and clarify other code references to required parking. Staff recommended several accompanying actions: easier mechanisms to share parking on private sites; updated EV-charging provisions tied to the number of on-site parking spaces actually provided; and upgraded bicycle-parking standards for security and usability.

Front-yard parking and BOZA: The code currently prohibits parking in the front landscaped yard, with a limited exception in lower-density districts when a site already meets its required parking. Because the proposed ordinance removes minimum parking requirements, staff proposed replacing the code’s “required parking” trigger with a test tied to whether a driveway leads to a legal off-street parking space on the property. In practical terms, that keeps the front-yard prohibition but allows two driveway spaces in some districts when the driveway leads to a legal off-street space; the key procedural change is to let some of those variances be handled administratively if all impacted adjacent property owners provide written support. Lisa Hood described that as a tool to reduce the number of cases that must automatically be scheduled before BOZA while maintaining neighbor protections.

On-street and neighborhood pilots: Hood said staff also plan adjustments to how on-street parking is managed — including triggers for staff review around large projects, a “park-and-walk” pilot near schools intended to reduce drop-off congestion, and a pilot in the Goss Grove neighborhood that would move from timed parking to paid parking for non-permit holders while distributing eco passes to residents.

Board response and next steps: Board members asked questions about how the administrative variance process would identify impacted neighbors, how shadowing and technical parking calculations are validated, and whether the incremental approach will match actual on-the-ground patterns (many homes already have driveway parking in front yards). Several board members voiced support for the broad policy direction; Ben Doyle said, “broadly, I think this is the right policy direction for the city.” The ordinances will go to planning board and council for formal hearings; if council adopts, staff said the effective date would be late June (staff cited an anticipated effective date of June 26 contingent on council action). Staff told BOZA the changes would apply to new development and redevelopment, and that current exemptions and administrative processes would be preserved in an updated form.