Further reading: Gateway Parking: 48 Drivers = 6 parking spaces

The Gateway Area Plan is proposing a minimum requirement for parking, in an effort to reduce the number of cars that people have here in Arcata. For residential uses, the minimum number of parking spaces required is Zero. And there also is a maximum number of parking spaces allowed — either one parking space for every 4 apartment units in the Hub and Corridor districts or one space for every 2 apartment units in the Barrel or Neighborhood Districts.  For more on this, see Gateway Parking: 48 Drivers = 6 parking spaces.

With this small amount of parking, banks may be unwilling to provide financing for these new projects. Lenders require secure projections on income, and from their point of view an apartment building with what they may regard as inadequate parking may not be bankable.

The financial lenders and the developers themselves may be unwilling to accept this

In his July 11, 2023, presentation to the Planning Commission, the Urban Field Studio architect and planner Ryan Call pointed out that the financial lender on these new apartments is going to have a vested interest in seeing that the apartments will be rented. The lender may have their own ideas about what it takes to have a project be economically secure, and that may include more parking. As Ryan Call said:

“And a part of this is speculation, but I am trying to create a somewhat more reality-based set of constraints. And so if a bank is financing the construction of an apartment building, they will want to see at least some level of parking provided to ensure that there is a very strong value in their development.”

For more on this, go to Gateway Density and Feasibility Study – Code Site Tests here on Arcata1.com. That link will take you right to the section on bank financing and parking.

For the developers themselves, they also might not want to construct a project with what they may see as a too small amount of parking. Even if the cost of the parking is unbundled from the rent, that might not be enough of an incentive to keep those apartments filled and rented. (“Unbundled” means that a tenant is not charged for a parking spot that he or she is not using. As a fictitious example, the rent of a one-bedroom apartment might be $1,500 a month with no parking, or $1,600 with a guaranteed space.)

For a parent or parent with children or an older person or a person with a disability, or just a tenant who does not want to walk in the rain — the prospect of looking for a parking space that is 3 or 4 or 5 blocks away may not be the way they choose to live.