Houston parking spots driving up costs, says advocacy group

Now, when you go downtown sometimes and you're looking for parking, it can be difficult, right? So there's a local group trying to raise awareness about parking requirements, saying that these massive lots are driving up the costs and taking away valuable space. Here's Leslie Delisport with that. Anthony, so I want to paint a picture for you. So right now we're in the East End and just to the left of me, if you know the East End, you know kind of where Canal Street sits, right? And we're actually not too far. You can see the skyline just behind me here. So to the left of me, I have my photographer show you. This is just kind of a prime example of what developers say neighborhoods can look like with less dedicated parking and more room for people. So advocates say, here's the thing. This isn't about getting rid of parking altogether, but it's about giving businesses and developers more flexibility. So right now there are requirements for developments to provide a certain number of parking spaces based on the size and the type of the business, but Ruben Garza with Strong Towns Houston says those requirements are going to come with a hefty price tag. Now the group estimates that building just one parking space can cost tens of thousands of dollars in expenses that are going to be passed on to you. Now the developer Jeff Kaplan with Concept Neighborhood says changing those rules has already helped his team create the walkable space that I just showed you there here in the East End and he wants to do the same in the Buffalo Bayou area. Now, I do want to paint a picture for you. So we did talk to both of them about what happens if these companies underestimate and that causes overflow, right? So for neighborhoods, and so Jeff says it's going to be about creating more walkable district approaches in Houston. So instead of surface level parking lots, think garage parking as an option that will lead into these walkable areas. And he says Houston is such a thriving city that we really can learn to adapt to less driving and more walking, but it all starts with conversation and detailed planning to make that a reality A lot of neighborhoods and developers and, you know, local entrepreneurs will kind of take a little more ownership of what gets built in their neighborhood. They would be able to, you know, build things a little more flexibly and not have to comply with parking codes that historically don't make sense and they were just made up and cost a lot of money. Parking is not cheap. It's actually very expensive and it gets bundled into the cost of construction and everyone pays for it down to getting a cup of coffee, buying a T-shirt or it comes out of your rent. The parking lots that exist today are probably going to exist the day after we do parking reform and get rid of minimum parking requirements. For the residents and the neighbors who have concerns about spillover, that's a real problem and I think that that can be addressed more so with management. Houston can figure out how to create these really surprising examples that mix incomes and have people living. In proximity to each other in a way that we want to. We want to share space. There's a certain type of business that doesn't want to go into a strip center and people are craving that. They're craving community today. All right, so Leslie, tell me more about the connection between these parking spaces with flooding and heat here in Houston that we know all about. So there is a big connection there, okay, and great question. So I want to kind of show you an example, right? So we spoke with Air Alliance. They are an environmental nonprofit, and so you can kind of see those people hanging out in that parking lot over there. But what they're saying is that all that asphalt in a big parking lot like that creates more surfaces where rainwater can't naturally soak into the ground, meaning more runoff and flooding, but it also does contribute to the heat in ways you might not even think about. An inch of rain on an acre of asphalt produces 27,000 gallons of runoff. So that means more pollution into our waterways, that means more flooding. Every 1% increase in parking lot surface area in a super neighborhood, there is a 0.2 Fahrenheit increase in summer surface temperature. That means that every time there's an increase in parking in a super neighborhood, it gets hotter. And so again, if you're looking on your screen, you're seeing that big concrete parking lot there. That's what they're talking about. But I do kind of want to show you a little bit of this rock parking lot where we're standing. This is kind of what developers are saying is more of the better equipped way to. Built these surface level parking lots, but again, also reducing those. But they want to stress that look, this isn't about eliminating parking, but it's about letting developers just have more control over how much parking is in our city. So that that land can be used for things like you heard earlier, more community based businesses and just more community building as a whole, Anthony. Yeah, something you might not think about, but something that is so valuable. Leslie, thank you so much for that story.