Fayetteville Ends Minimum Parking Requirements for Commercial Uses

City Council members in Fayetteville, Arkansas, recently "approved a proposal to completely eliminate minimum parking requirements for nonresidential properties," reports Todd Gill. "The change means new businesses in commercial areas will no longer be required to provide a set number of parking spaces for their customers."

Gill lays out the way the old parking requirements worked, as well as some of the arguments made by city planners to explain the change. Among the arguments in support of dropping the city's commercial parking requirements: "Planning Commissioners last month criticized the laws for not considering the location of the business and for seemingly being set to satisfy peak demand instead of normal, everyday traffic," and, "[t]he old laws, planners said, made it difficult to start small businesses and discouraged people from walking or riding bikes."

The article includes ore detail about the legal and political debate that produced the final, approved version of the new parking requirements.