No off-street parking

Hi Harry, there's a distinction here between "no off-street parking" and "no NEW off-street parking." v2009 gave credit for both, v4 only gives credit for the first.

In v2009 you could earn credit just by providing no NEW parking. For example, a surface parking lot with 200 spaces is replaced with a building including 100 garage spaces, resulting in a net loss of parking. Or a building is constructed on a campus but it uses an existing shared lot. In either of those cases, no parking spaces were added to serve the project and the v2009 credit would have been earned.

In v4, credit is not automatically earned for either of those scenarios. The building with garage would need to demonstrate that the 100 spaces it's providing occupants meet the LTc Reduced Parking Footprint requirements for base ratio reduction and carpool parking. The campus building would need to do the same for its estimated share of existing parking.

What v4 DOES give credit for is having zero parking spaces provided to building occupants. This would simply be considered a 100% reduction from the base ratio and therefore the credit is earned.

The credit language is not clear as discussed above.  I have interpreted it to mean that if there is no parking, there is no credit.  Based on Emily's comment, it sounds like credit is available if there is no parking.  If the local planning commission does not require any parking, is the credit available?

The intent of this credit is to reduce parking availability, so earning credit for providing zero parking is definitely in line with the intent.

v4 only references local zoning in the requirement that parking provided not exceed the local zoning parking minimum. So if local zoning has no parking minimum, and the project provides zero parking, you're meeting that requirement and demonstrating a 100% reduction from the base ratio. 

One discussion I'd had at USGBC was regarding whether projects providing no parking automatically earned the exemplary performance point as well. The conclusion was that while no parking is a 100% reduction from the base ratio and therefore over the EP threshold, it might not apply to all projects. If the project is an unusual case like a drive-through business or project with no regular occupancy, no parking wouldn't be particularly innovative. Basically, if you're pursuing EP on this credit, include a narrative confirming that zero parking is in fact going above and beyond versus just a default for the project. (I wish that was a simple "yes, it meets the threshold," but you know how rare simple answers are around here!)

Projects with no associated off street parking automatically achieve credit compliance (Ref Guide P-113,under Step 1-point 2).Here 'no associated off street parking' refers to the case when no parking is provided when there is no local code parking requirement(Step 1-point 1).Is this interpretation correct?

It's any case where no parking is provided, no matter what local code says.

The credit requires you not exceed the local code parking minimum. So if you're providing zero parking, it doesn't matter whether the local code has a parking minimum of zero, has no minimum at all, or has a minimum number that you've gotten a variance/exception from - zero parking means you're not exceeding it.