What’s The Question About?
Minimum parking requirements have been the subject of debate for years both in residential and industrial construction space. But what’s so important about it? Why is it a matter of interest? Well, lately industrial developers are trying to assess whether minimum parking requirements are really worth the space. And the answer is that industrial real estate is not being utilized efficiently due to restricting minimum parking requirements.
The Report
The commercial real estate development association, NAIOP Vancouver, and the transportation management and consultation firm, Bunt & Associates rolled out a special report examining minimum parking requirements for industrial sites. 62 industrial sites went into the making of the report as a sample including Surrey (10), Burnaby (8), Delta (6), Vancouver (5), and Richmond (5).
The findings: Parking utilization even during the peak hours between 9:00 am to 11:00 am (on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays) remains less than 50% in Lower Mainland. In other words, there is an oversupply of parking space by over 50%.
The team visited a variety of sites ranging in size from 30 sq. ft. to over 100 sq. ft. Despite the variety, the parking utilization rate remained between 41% and 53%.
What Do Experts Say?
As per Bunt & Associates, “Sites in municipalities closer to the Metro Core tend to have higher parking utilization on average. The highest parking utilization was observed at Vancouver sites, with an average utilization of 70%. North Vancouver followed closely with a utilization of 63%. The lowest parking utilization was observed at Richmond sites, with an average utilization of 32%. Chilliwack followed closely with a utilization of 34%.”
Carl Funk, Director of Industrial Planning & Development for Beedie described the difference between industrial and residential parking requirements, “The thing about industrial is there’s such a variety of uses… For residential, you have one-bed, two-bed [units] and you can then get a pretty good idea of the parking count. Across the board [for industrial], it looks like we’re overparking all of these sites.”
Funk further added, “There might be a situation when a company comes in looking to build a new building and, for whatever reason, might require more parking — that should be allowed… We need that flexibility. Allow the builder to build more industrial, but if they need more parking, that would be okay, too. Right now, it just seems like these bylaws are restricting more than they should be.”
