Hello - I have project placed within a Transit Oriented Development (TOD) Overlay. For this city the zoning code in this overlay now says there is "no minimum" for off street parking. Additionally the zoning rules say there is a *maximum* parking capacity of 1 spot per 600sf of floor area.
I am not sure how this zoning rule will influence the ability of this project to attain the Reduced Parking credit. Would LEED consider a "no minimum" to be the same thing as minimum requirement of zero? If so then theres no way to achieve this credit unless we have zero off street parking correct?
Or could we interpret "no minimum" instead as a sort of qualitatative statement? In other words we could argue to LEED that we have nothing official to reference for the minimum number of parking spots therefore we kind of just ignore the LEED requirement for "do not exceed the minimum local code requirements" for parking because there is literally no minimum number specified? This feels a little weird but maybe it would work?
Thank you!
Graham
Emily Purcell
Sustainable Design LeadCannonDesign
LEEDuser Expert
365 thumbs up
June 26, 2023 - 11:06 am
Hi Graham,
I interpret this in favor of allowing you to earn the credit and not that the minimum is zero. The "do not exceed minimum local code requirements" requirement is in response to many local code minimums being unnecessarily high and assuming people don't take advantage of transit, shared parking, etc. TOD overlays are a way of correcting that. So I think of the "minimum local code requirement" as the standard zoning and the TOD location as a way for this project to reduce its parking below that minimum. It does sound a bit stretch-y but it's very much in line with the intent of the credit. There are a lot of posts in this forum asking what to do if the ITE reductions come in lower than the local zoning minimum, and "look for TOD incentives" is always part of my advice there.
At least in my city, when there is no parking minimum in the TOD districts developments do still need to be approved by the alderman or planning department, so there often ends up being a non-zero "minimum" established in this process.
Graham Linn
HabLabJune 26, 2023 - 12:18 pm
Thank you Emily! I really appreciate the point about the credit intent, that makes a ton of sense.