6 August 24 - 30, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents delta credits, he would have had a difficult time providing all that parking. Delta credits exempt buildings that were constructed be- fore parking requirements went into effect. Since then, Barrett has been looking into parking in the city and has learned there’s a huge difference between the parking a proj- ect needs and the parking that is required. “Those two things are not the same,” Barrett said. “Not at all.” These parking requirements can make building more difficult and more expensive than it needs to be in Dallas. That’s partly why City Council member Chad West filed a memo to get Dallas to take another look at its parking rules. His memo, signed by five council members, asks City Manager T.C. Broadnax to begin planning and implement- ing actions to reduce parking mandates and to provide briefings on the status of the elimination of minimum parking require- ments in Dallas. The city’s Zoning Ordi- nance Advisory Committee discussed the issue at its meeting last week. West authored a similar memo to the city manager in 2019, but he said discussions about parking reform have been stalled ever since. “I’m over it,” West said. “It’s time to actually address this issue and to help our city become a modernized city.” His memo this year also calls for the city to adopt something called Park(ing) Day, which recognizes how you can put parking spaces to other uses besides just parking. Jaime Resendez, Adam Bazaldua, Jaynie Schultz and Gay Donnell Willis were the other City Council members who signed on to the memo. It was a case in 2017 that ini- tially got West paying attention to parking reform. “It was a ridiculous overparking re- quirement for a hotel,” West told the Ob- server. The hotel would have had 12 rooms and would have been within walking dis- tance of the Bishop Arts District. There would also be a restaurant on site. The de- velopment would have been required to pro- vide 25 parking spaces for the restaurant and 12 spaces for the hotel. “So, it was impossible. It wasn’t going to be able to be built,” West said. “But the cra- zier part of it all was that this occurred within one block of the streetcar stop and within like four blocks of the Bishop Arts District where people are taking Ubers and Lyfts, and walking. So, it made no sense for this parking requirement to be in existence.” Barrett explained that, as it stands now, Dallas follows a conventional approach to parking. It sets a ratio usually based on square feet (but sometimes based on the number of seats or some other capacity measure) for minimum parking requirements. A ware- house, for example, might require only one space for every 500 square feet, while a res- taurant or bar might require one parking space for every 100 square feet of floor space, Barrett said. Multifamily developments re- quire one parking space for every bedroom. “That’s the approach that Dallas has taken since about the mid-1960s, and most American cities have done the same thing in that time period,” Barrett said. This can cause a number of problems when it comes to building in Dallas. One of those problems, Barrett said, is that it creates an incentive to knock down older historic buildings to make way for more parking. “If you have a business that is successful and you want to expand it or even change what use you’re doing in the build- ing, you’ll have to have more parking and that might entail knocking down a building next door,” he explained. “You may not even really need it to service all your customers but just because that’s the law and you can’t run the business without the parking, you knock down some buildings.” He said parking requirements also make it difficult to build density in Dallas. A single car can take up about 300 square feet, and this can add up quickly. In the case of a restaurant that requires one parking spot for every 100 square feet, “that means you have to have a parking lot three times the size of the restaurant,” Barrett said. “This has the effect of causing everything to be spread out.” He also noted that while parking takes up a lot of land, it often doesn’t make for a large return. “If you think about how much peo- ple are willing to pay to park, it’s not very much,” Barrett said. “So that translates into lower tax revenues for all of us because now we have all this land dedicated to low-value parking.” Parking requirements can also make some lots unable to be developed, he added, and they can make building more expensive in Dallas. One of the biggest costs in all of this is simply providing the parking. If you’re con- structing structured or underground park- ing, it could cost $30,000–$50,000 per space, according to Barrett. This can affect affordability for tenants. “You can pretty re- liably estimate those costs,” he said. “For ev- ery $100 it costs, you’re going to probably add a dollar of cost to rent to everyone.” Doing away with all of these parking re- quirements could solve a lot of the problems for developers and certain businesses. What it wouldn’t do is solve the original problems that parking requirements were meant to solve, such as curb management and associ- ated issues with loading and unloading zones and parking meters, and spillover parking for locations where the standard parking is at capacity. But Barrett said there are better ways to address these issues. The city could instead use no-parking zones, more resident-only or permitted parking, and more parking meters. “The right solution is to regulate the problem directly,” Barrett said. “We got a nuisance parking problem. Let’s charge for parking. Let’s make sure people don’t park where they shouldn’t.” ▼ PUBLIC SAFETY LESS FAST, LESS FURIOUS DALLAS SPEEDS UP EFFORTS TO SLOW STREET RACING. BY JACOB VAUGHN I n August 2021, Dallas police responded to a street takeover when two people sit- ting in a vehicle began shooting assault rifles into the air. The pair fled when the cops tried to stop them, and an ensuing chase led to their arrests. Just months ear- lier, in April 2021, a woman named Lynetta Washington was shot and killed outside her home when someone began shooting during a street takeover. Washington’s case remains unsolved. In 2020, street racing cars ended up in Anga Sanders’ backyard on two sepa- rate occasions. One of them came within a few feet of her bedroom wall. These are just a few of the wild and sometimes tragic outcomes of illegal street takeovers and races. Street racing events spiked during the height of the pandemic, when there were around 2,000 street racers out on any given weekend. Often, several such events were taking place simultaneously around Dallas. Street takeovers are closely associated with racing, but also include large groups of vehi- cles blocking off entire streets or intersec- tions while revving engines, peeling out and creating clouds of smoke. Things have gotten a bit quieter in Dallas in the past couple of years, according to the police department, as street racers have left for surrounding cities. Takeovers are still happening, but the Dallas Police Depart- ment says there hasn’t been one in the city in some three months. Nevertheless, the de- partment is still dishing out plenty of cita- tions and making traffic stops and arrests related to street racing in the city. In all of 2022, DPD made 4,611 traffic stops related to street racing, according to the department. The city has an ordinance that punishes people for watching street races and takeovers, and nearly 200 people were cited or arrested for spectating last year. There were 179 accidents related to street racing that year, and the department made hundreds of arrests related to street racing. Connected to these incidents, 101 guns were seized and 69 stolen vehicles were recovered. The numbers so far this year seem to show some improvement in some areas, but not quite across the board. Through July 31 of this year, the depart- ment has made some 1,821 traffic stops re- lated to street racing. It also arrested and cited fewer than 100 people for spectating street takeovers and racing events. But the calls are still coming in about the street rac- ers. DPD has received about 2,661 such calls in 2023. There have been 118 street-racing related accidents so far this year, and the de- partment has seized 54 guns and recovered 75 stolen vehicles. DPD spokesperson Brian Martinez told the Observer the department has adopted several measures to reduce the numbers. “We take a zero-tolerance approach to street racing,” Martinez said in an emailed state- ment. He said the department works to have a presence in areas where street takeovers might occur before they even begin. The de- partment has installed calming measures like speed bumps, speed humps and bike lanes at intersections where street takeovers have occurred in the past. The state is also taking measures to crack down on street racing and stunt driving. In early August, Gov. Greg Abbott appeared in Fort Worth, where last month five people were arrested for street racing. Abbott was there to sign two bills aimed at helping police and prosecutors reel in racers and stunt driv- ers. The two laws, House Bill 1442 and House Bill 2899, will take effect on Sept. 1. HB 1442 provides law enforcement and prosecutors with more tools to go after orga- nized street racing and street takeovers in the state and mete out more substantial con- sequences for those who participate in these events. HB 2899 allows for the immediate removal of vehicles used in street racing events or street takeovers. It eliminates a previous requirement that a vehicle be im- pounded only if there were property dam- age or someone suffered bodily injury. Instead, cars may now be impounded if the owners are charged with racing on a high- way or for reckless driving. In February this year, Abbott launched a statewide street takeover task force. Since then, the task force has halted numerous takeover events in all seven division regions of the Texas Highway Patrol. Working with local law enforcement, the Department of Public Safety has made more than 50 arrests and 590 traffic stops and has issued more than 390 traffic citations associated with il- legal street racing in Texas. “Illegal street racing has become a grow- ing problem,” Abbott said during a Jacob Vaughn In Dallas, multifamily developments are required to have one parking spot per bedroom. Unfair Park from p4 >> p8
