Royal Oak planning staff presents history and data showing many properties fall short of current parking rules

Planning staff told the Royal Oak Planning Commission on Tuesday that a historical review and a recent corridor analysis show widespread noncompliance with the city's current off-street parking standards and recommended further study before any ordinance changes.

"We broke it out in two portions," Joseph Murphy, director of planning, said as he described a staff analysis of every multifamily and commercial site in the city. "The analysis concluded that 78% of all the multifamily housing built in Royal Oak prior to 2002 couldn't meet the parking standards that we have today... Of the 222 sites that are multifamily built prior to 2002, 61% had fewer than 1.5 parking spaces per unit." Murphy emphasized staff does not intend to propose ordinance amendments before the zoning rewrite but called for more research and discussion.

Murphy traced the ordinance's evolution back to the 1953 amendments that exempted a central business area from off-street parking requirements and noted incremental changes through the 1960s and 1980s that increased multifamily parking ratios. He said staff reviewed seven commercial corridors — including 11 Mile Road — and calculated compliance rates for 516 properties. "In total, the majority of uses of the 516 properties on those seven corridors... are not compliant with today's off-street parking requirements," Murphy said.

Commissioners pressed staff on what the data meant in practice and what further analysis would cost. Mayor Mike Fournier said the charts show the city is "woefully under parked" relative to historical standards but that he has not seen widespread complaints on the ground: "When I look at the millions of square feet that have been developed... we've handled the exceptions." Fournier and others suggested permit parking as a remedy for neighborhood spillover and asked staff to identify where permit zones have been used as a corrective.

Murphy and commissioners discussed practical next steps for data collection. Murphy recommended targeted occupancy counts timed to peak demand for different uses (e.g., 3 a.m. checks for multifamily occupancy or Friday/Saturday evenings for restaurants) and acknowledged that hiring a firm to collect that data would incur costs. He noted the current inventory does not analyze cross-use or shared-parking dynamics in depth and that the ordinance's formal shared-parking provisions require affidavits filed with the county.

Commissioner remarks also focused on market incentives. Several members said developers typically seek relief when they can demonstrate a project is economically viable with fewer parking spaces, and Commissioner Woody Gantina urged exploring community benefits or other levers to ensure savings are reinvested into building quality when parking is reduced.

There was no formal action or vote on changes to the code. Staff described the presentation as an "educational exercise" and said it will return with additional memoranda and possibly recommendations after further study. The commission asked staff to scope potential parking occupancy studies, costs and methodologies and to report back.