Does your Lacey apartment have enough parking? Council votes to increase parking minimums
The Lacey City Council voted to increase the minimum number of parking spaces for future multifamily developments and to require electric vehicle parking and chargers for a range of uses.
But council members acknowledged that doing so likely will have an unwelcome impact.
Councilman Lenny Greenstein sounded the alarm that new requirements for multifamily developments likely mean higher costs and that those costs could be passed on to renters.
“We can’t have our cake and eat it too,” said Greenstein about the city’s ongoing concern about the need for affordable housing.
“Every time we add more parking, or more requirements, we drive up the cost of housing in a market that already has a housing shortage,” he said. “We can’t have it both ways.”
Before Thursday’s vote, the city’s multifamily parking minimum was a flat 1.5 spaces per unit. However, the city began to hear from the operators of apartment complexes — the Britton Apartments in northeast Lacey, for example — that they were having trouble providing enough parking to accommodate residents.
The council ultimately voted unanimously to change the multifamily parking standard to one based on the number of bedrooms per unit. For example, instead of 1.5 spaces being provided for a three-bedroom unit, it would now have two spaces, city information shows.
Planning Commission Manager Ryan Andrews made clear that the council was just voting on a minimum requirement. If a developer wants to build more parking, they could, he said.
The ordinance did not address visitor parking. That was something Mayor Andy Ryder pushed, although Greenstein pointed out that by increasing the parking minimums it might address his concerns.
Councilwoman Robin Vazquez added that the new policy is not retroactive, meaning the Britton Apartments still have a problem. She wondered if more could be done with public transportation to help the apartment community.
Vazquez grew up in Bremerton, she told the council, and said the area’s largest employer, the Naval shipyard, had all kinds of shuttles that served it. Perhaps something similar could be set up for those Britton Apartment residents who work at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.
“Explore direct transit routes to the base that would allow people in Lacey to get to work without needing to depend on parking availability,” she said.
Electric vehicle parking
The council also weighed requiring that a certain percentage of parking be provided for electric vehicles.
Currently the code makes such parking optional.
Under consideration was a 10 percent electric vehicle parking requirement for multifamily development of 10 or more units, 10 percent for lodging (hotels), 3 percent for office, institutional, municipal and medical, and 1 percent for industrial and recreational uses.
Greenstein quickly turned up his nose at the ordinance, calling it pointless because developers are already prepared to cater to the growth in electric vehicle use.
“I see no reason for us to pass an ordinance to do what the market is already doing,” he said.
One reason the electric vehicle topic came before the council is that it’s considered a “priority implementation item within the Thurston Climate Mitigation Plan,” according to agenda materials for the meeting.
Some council members had trouble with the 10 percent requirement, thinking it was too high and the ordinance failed on a 4-3 vote.
Then Councilman Michael Steadman offered an amended motion that lowered the 10 percent requirement to 5 percent for multifamily development and hotels. That passed by a 5-2 vote, with Greenstein and Ed Kunkel opposed. Kunkel was concerned about the cost and the potential liability problems of charging stations being forced on developers.
Vazquez voted in support of it.
“It feels like incrementalism for a goal we all know we need to get to, and I think the data will show that this is going to be roughly half as effective as a 10 percent target,” she said. “But I do want us to get going on establishing a foundation.”
This story was originally published February 19, 2022 at 5:45 AM.
