Impact fee helps to fund public parking garages

Downtown developers will now be able to avoid having to include a parking garage in their projects.

City commissioners approved March 7 a parking impact fee, or “in-lieu-of” fee, in which a developer will have the option of contributing money to a parking fund in lieu of constructing his own parking.

For any new or improvement project of more than 10,000 square feet downtown, zoning code requires the creation of one parking space per 500 square feet, one space per dwelling unit or one space for every two hotel rooms.

Developers would pay $12,000 for each space eliminated from their projects.

For example, if a 100-room hotel is built next to the Palm Avenue parking garage, the developer would be required to include 50 parking spaces inside his building.

Instead, he could pay $300,000 to eliminate 25 of those required spaces and use 25 spaces in the parking garage next door.

“A hotel doesn’t want to waste two floors on parking,” said City Manager Bob Bartolotta. “They can pay for spaces in the garage next door.”

To qualify, the project would have to be within a quarter-mile of a public parking garage.

The $12,000-per-space fee is likely less than developers have to pay for each space if they constructed them on their own.

The cost for each space in the Palm Avenue garage was $17,000.

“The reason (the cost) is lower is to incentivize development,” said Mike Taylor, a planning and development general manager.

City Hall would determine if there are enough public garage spaces nearby to accommodate a request. If it qualifies, the developer would pay the in-lieu-of fee, as well as a $40 monthly parking permit for each public garage space, which could be passed on to tenants or employees.

The money collected would be put toward the construction of more public parking garages.

In-lieu-of fee
For a hypothetical downtown project of 100,000 square feet, 200 parking spaces would be required.

At $17,000 per space, which is what the Palm Avenue parking garage cost, the developer would pay $3.4 million.

With the in-lieu-of fee option, the developer would pay $12,000 per space, or $2.4 million.

Contact Robin Roy at [email protected]