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Tula council reviews proposed parking rules for dealerships, repair shops
Summary
City planning staff presented a draft ordinance to set minimum off-street parking and storage standards for automobile sales, repair and towing-related storage; council members raised concerns about impacts on small lube shops and whether auto-parts retail should remain in the draft. No vote was taken.
TULA, Utah — The Tula City Council on May 6 reviewed a proposed text amendment that would add specific off-street parking and vehicle-storage standards for automobile-related commercial uses.
Community Development Director Andrew Agard told the council the planning commission drafted the ordinance after repeatedly confronting conditional-use cases for dealerships and repair businesses that the current code does not clearly regulate. “The reason that this has come before you is over the past year, the planning commission has dealt with a number of conditional use permits involving automobile dealerships and automobile repair businesses,” Agard said.
The draft would establish numeric requirements tied to business type and building area: for automobile service businesses, three parking spaces for each service bay; for parts-and-supply retail, three spaces per 1,000 square feet of indoor retail area; and for automobile sales, one customer parking space per 400 square feet of indoor sales area or five spaces, whichever is greater. The proposal also caps compact spaces at 25 percent and would require temporary vehicle-storage areas (for towed vehicles) to be paved, screened and approved through site-plan or conditional-use review.
Agard said staff has edited the planning commission’s draft to remove redundant language and present the standards in a single table while clarifying the ordinance applies to automobile service/repair and automobile sales.
Council members pressed staff on how the rules would affect existing businesses. Agard said existing uses would become legally nonconforming under Tula City Code 7-3 and could continue as-is, but would need to comply if they undertake renovations. “If they’re going to do any renovations or changes, then they would have to conform to this new code,” he said.
Several council members said numeric thresholds might be excessive for quick-service oil and lube shops, which typically operate with short customer dwell times. One council member suggested a lube-shop exception; others worried the new standards could prevent small startups or long-standing neighborhood shops from locating in constrained sites. The council also debated whether to keep auto-parts stores in the amendment; a number of members argued that parts retail functions like ordinary retail and could remain under existing retail parking rules.
Council members and staff agreed the planning commission’s conditional-use review process currently provides site-specific flexibility, but several said the draft ordinance should be revisited to address the concerns raised on parking counts, exceptions for lube-type businesses, and removing auto-parts retail before any public hearing.
No motion or vote was taken at the work meeting; staff will return the draft to the planning commission for further review and bring a revised draft back to the council for later consideration.
Next steps: the council asked staff to revise the draft in consultation with the planning commission and to schedule a public hearing only after the committee’s feedback has been incorporated.
