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Case study: staff shows how parking can double lot area in Amherst Street redevelopment
Summary
Durfee presented a redevelopment example off Amherst Street where a 163-unit building at a 1:1 parking ratio would require about 53,000 sq ft of parking on a 27,000-sq-ft lot, illustrating how parking demand can overwhelm buildable area and motivate density and mobility strategies.
As an example of the stakes in updating the parking chapter, staff presented a redevelopment scenario off Amherst Street. Under a standard 1:1 parking ratio, a 163-unit project would require roughly 163 parking spaces, which staff estimated would occupy about 53,000 square feet of surface parking on a 27,000-square-foot lot—effectively making the parking field larger than the building footprint.
Durfee showed an alternative sustainable-development scenario in which incentives and mobility measures produced 178 units while reducing the parking ratio to 0.8 (yielding roughly 50 garage spaces). He used the illustration to show why staff believe calibrated ratios and an enforceable mobility-management menu can unlock more productive land uses.
