Parking Lots -- Too Big and Too Little

The planned Tavistock development is slated for the upper area of this photograph, to the left of Apopka-Vineland Road and north of the Cascades Publix shopping plaza.  The photo captures a typical day when the half of the parking lot closest to Apopka-Vineland Road (and furthest from the Publix) sits as empty asphalt.  In contrast, St. Luke's Methodist Church, across the street, relies on grassy areas for overflow parking.   

Tavistock is requesting a waiver to remove several hundred parking spaces required under the Orange County Code at a planned development at the southwest corner of Apopka-Vineland and Conroy-Windermere Roads.  Tavistock is justifying the request on the basis that calculations for required parking spaces are based on single use, whereas Tavistock is planning multiple uses that will experience peak hours at different times. 

For example, Tavistock's planned fitness center will generate the most parking in the early morning and evening whereas the bank and office building will generate the most parking during business hours.    Even during the noon hour, when fitness center use increases, total parking generation will not exceed 1,000 spaces, according to a shared parking analysis by the planning firm Glatting Jackson. 

These business should share parking spaces.  To save unnecessary construction costs, every proposed mixed use development should conduct, and the County Code should recognize, a shared parking analysis. 

The County's voluminous parking requirements are based on annual peak demand--for example, the Sunday before Christmas for retail development--which leaves huge expanses of half-empty asphalt 90% of the time.  Our off-street parking requirements are generally too large and denigrate the built environment. 

Typical half-empty parking lot in front of strip shopping center on Hiawassee Road.

Winter Park K-Mart Plaza.  Typical parking patterns with huge expanses of empty asphalt. 

Developers pay for all the extra, unused asphalt, which drives up rent, which increases the cost of goods and services to consumers.  We pay this hidden parking fee everyday.  If the County grants Tavistock the waiver it seeks, it will avoid the cost of building a structured parking garage, which could cost about $10,000 per parking space.  Such a garage would drive up rents and consumer costs. 

I am the first to concede notable instances when we can't find enough parking.  I often find a packed parking lot at The Fountains on Sand Lake Road on Friday and Saturday evenings, when its myriad restaurants (all the same land use) are doing the most business at the same time.  Winter Park Village, on 17-92, historically had insufficient parking at peak shopping and eating times. 

In most instances, however, when we say we can't find parking, we can't find convenient parking within a few hundred feet of our destination. 

ITE Parking Generation Calculations--Voodoo Mathematics

Most local governments base parking requirements on mathematical formulas published by the Institute for Transportation Engineers ("ITE").  For example, a fast food restaurant with a drive-through window must have 9.95 parking spaces per thousand square feet.  Consequently, most suburban 3,000 square foot McDonalds and other fast food restaurants nationwide will have 30 parking spaces--regardless of the availability of transit, walkability from adjacent neighborhoods, or actual experience.  

Donald Shoup, a University of California at Los Angeles professor of land planning, analyzed the ITE requirements and found them statistically indefensible.   ITE bases many of its parking demand graphs on a miniscule number of studies of limited observations in auto dependent environments lacking transit. 

Shoup sharply criticizes the parking requirements for drive-through fast food restaurants.  ITE reports average parking generation of 9.95 spaces per thousand feet.  Shoup argues this precision gives a false sense of mathematical certainty.  A closer look at the ITE graph below (from the 1987 edition of ITE's Parking Generation) shows that the 9.95 average per 1,000 square feet bears no relationship to the wide range of parking demand.  Square footage is a poor basis on which to calculate parking demand.  

ITE plotted peak parking demand on the vertical axis and restaurant square footage on the horizontal axis.  The plotted squares measure the various observations.  The diagonal line marks the average and serves as the basis for the precise 9.95/1,000 square feet ITE parking generation calculation.  Local governments adopt ITE's calculations for maximum, peak demand as minimum Code requirements.  However, the diagonal line bears virtually no relationship to the scattered observations. 

The chart above plots the basis for a regression equation. (Don't let the mathematical term scare you--read on.)  A regression equation measures predictability on a scale of 0 to 1--from zero predictability to complete predictability.  If parking demand truly and absolutely related to square footage, the plotted squares would all fall on the average line and the regression calculation (R squared) would be 1.  If restaurant square footage was a significant, but not exclusive factor in parking demand, the plotted squares would fall near the diagonal line.  However, in the chart above, the plotted squares fall haphazardly all over the chart. 

One of the largest restaurants, at over 5,500 square feet (on the right side of the graph) generated only about 20 full parking spaces at peak hour.  A restaurant more than half as small, 2,500 square feet, generated about 35 full parking spaces, tying for fourth highest on the chart.  The regression calculation on this chart (R squared) stands at an abysmal 0.038--very close to zero.  The line drawn by ITE is statistically indefensible.  In later editions of its Parking Generation book, ITE removed the R squared calculation. 

Our everyday experience confirms that square footage does not necessarily mean more parking usage. Despite voluminous passer-by traffic, most parking spaces at the Burger King at Kirkman and Colonial are empty at dinner time. A parking lot at a much smaller restaurant, the McDonalds on 17-92 in Maitland, is often packed at the same time.   

Several years ago, when Professor Shoup asked ITE to publish his article articulating these deficiencies in its Journal, ITE refused.  I would have preferred to see ITE acknowledge deficiencies and start a dialogue within the transportation engineering community about how to improve the methodology.  I would like to see ITE publish recommendations for shared parking, parking for areas served by transit, transit oriented development, and walkable communities. 

Corporate Demand for Parking Spaces

Developers contend the corporations they want to lure are driving large numbers of parking spaces.  CVS requests 75-80 parking spaces for each store location.  At the Tavistock community meeting last week,  attended by several dozen people, I asked how many people had ever seen 80 people in a CVS.  Not one hand raised. 

Walgreen's at C.R. 535 and Tilden Road in the City of Winter Garden.  Typical pattern--fifteen parking stalls used and more than forty empty.  The store would have more than sixty empty stalls if this were a CVS with the usual 75-80 parking spaces.   

However, even CVS will depart from its prototype.  The CVS in Baldwin Park has a limited number of on-street parking spaces in front and a shared parking lot in the rear, in the middle of block, hidden from street view.

Baldwin Park CVS.  Limited, shared on-street parking in front and a shared parking lot in the rear.

Many corporations have not grasped that half-empty parking lots make their investments appear economically unhealthy.  In the Pine Hills, this contributes to the perception of downward spiraling businesses. 

Strip shopping center at Pine Hills Road and Silver Star. 

In contrast to CVS, Home Depot conducted a study of its stores and, based on the findings, lowered its parking requirement from over 900 spaces to around 540 spaces per store.  Lower development costs can enable Home Depot to gain a price advantage over its closest rival, Lowes. 

Orange County staff has grasped the over-abundance of parking and no longer permits developers to pave more than 10% over the minimum requirement.  The current code hinders shared parking by requiring Affidavits.  As the planning staff works on a Unified Land Development Code, it should incorporate provisions encouraging shared parking, including payment into a fund for shared parking lots, and loosen the virtual prohibition on on-street parking. 

UPDATE 8/29: At last week's community meeting, I incorrectly identified Professor Shoup as from the University of California at Berkley.  He is at UCLA. 

Architecture, Not Parking Lots, Should Define Streets

At the last Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, I failed to win approval of a motion to "minimize" parking in front of a proposed 12,000 square foot, two-story professional office building on Apopka-Vineland Road. (The vote, 3-3, was technically "no action.") The applicant is proposing the new building to replace an existing one-story medical office building at the "Four Corners," just south of Conroy-Windermere Road, to continue and expand her medical practice.

We have degraded Central Florida's roads by lining them with parking lots.

The Windermere and Dr. Phillips communities opposed development at the "Four Corners" for many years. In the 1990's, the County Commission approved development along with expanding the intersecting roads to four lanes to support it. The concession to the community was a "Community Village Center" ordinance. The ordinance required "pedestrian oriented" development with a "streetscape" that would have "definition." The ordinance required development that would have a "sense of place."

I have never seen a parking lot with a "sense of place." A streetscape requiring "definition" needs architectural definition in addition to landscaping. We lose architectural definition by moving buildings far from our roads.

A huge parking lot in front of a building is not, by any stretch, "pedestrian oriented." Most people will not walk more than a 1/4 mile before opting for their cars. When we set back development 1/8 of a mile or more from the sidewalk, we make walking less convenient and encourage automobile travel, even by those who live in the subdivision next door. This development pattern unnecessarily adds to automobile congestion.

A professional office building, Perkins, and a CVS hide much, but not all of the parking on the northeast side of the Four Corners intersection. At the southeast corner, the stunning Tavistock Financial Center hides parking below and behind the building. Tavistock has set the correct example.


Tavistock Financial Center--No parking lot in front--Across from the proposed professional medical office building on Apopka-Vineland Road

Unicorp learned from the aesthetic mistake of placing huge parking lots along Sand Lake Road. Unicorp's most spectacular development to date, Dellagio, hides parking below and behind the buildings.


Dellagio. Sand Lake Road is to the right.


View of Sand Lake Road toward Plaza Venezia. Parking lot placement in front of buildings is an aesthetic error.

Celebration and Baldwin Park internalize their parking in the middle of blocks, which allows for on-street parking to buffer pedestrians.


Aerial View of Celebration Town Center. Buildings brought close to the street hide parking lots.


Aerial view of Baldwin Park. Buildings hide parking lots, in the middle of blocks.


Street-level view of Post Lake Apartments in Baldwin Park. Notice the parking lot hidden by the building at the far left.

Grocery stores and big box stores, where numerous customers make large, bulky purchases, can justify parking lots in front. But even in those instances, like the Baldwin Park Publix, developers should plan for future buildings to hide much of the parking lot. Another possibility: corner entrances can disperse parking at half the depth on two sides of the building, like at the Publix in Watercolor, Florida, in the Panhandle. One side can have a pedestrian orientation--ideally with small businesses wrapping an otherwise empty wall. The pedestrian side can connect to a residential area.


Watercolor, Florida Publix--Entrance at the corner to disperse parking on two sides.

The application for the 12,000 square foot Four Corners professional office building goes to the Board of County Commissioners for consideration in October. Section 38-1476 of the Orange County Code requires five parking spaces per 1,000 square feet of office use. Sixty more parking spaces lining Apopka-Vineland Road is too much. The County should insist on a parking lot to the building's side and rear, with perhaps a limited amount of parking in front for medical emergencies.

I agree with the Commissioners who did not support my motion, who took the principled position that we should amend the ordinance Countywide for uniformity. The more predictability we give developers and the community, the better for everyone.