KC’s new parking rules prioritize growth for ‘people, not cars,’ officials say
Kansas City is ditching a city code that long required new development to include a certain amount of parking space, which helped turn a significant portion of the city’s usable land into surface-level parking lots.
The City Council on Thursday approved a new ordinance eliminating the requirements in a sweeping area designated as the city’s “urban core.” That includes parts of the city between the Missouri River, Blue River, 85th Street and State Line Road.
The change, which goes into effect later this month, aims to encourage more walkable development in the city and reduce on-site parking in the future.
Mayor Quinton Lucas said in a statement on Friday that is making Kansas City residents a higher priority than cars and parking lots.
“For too long, parking minimums have driven up the cost of housing and made it harder to build the kind of walkable, connected neighborhoods Kansas City deserves,” Lucas said in the statement. “Removing these requirements puts people, not cars, at the center of how we grow our city. This is smart planning, and it’s good for Kansas City.”
The change means developers will no longer be required to include a minimum amount of parking spaces when opening new businesses or building new apartment blocks in most of the city south of the river. Developers can still build new parking for their projects, if they choose to. It’s just not required in the same way.
The changes also include new parking maximums that limit the number of parking spaces based on the type of development. City officials say developers can surpass that limit if additional amenities are added, like more landscaping and crosswalks.
Previously, parking requirements for new development depended on the type of property and its location in the city. The city had already reduced or removed parking minimums for development in downtown, the Crossroads and near the streetcar line.
Councilmember Eric Bunch, who represents the 4th District and supported the ordinance change, told The Star that the parking minimum policy is a relic of the past that is no longer viable for a growing city. He said requiring parking is making housing construction more expensive, and it’s stifled redevelopment of older buildings for businesses like restaurants. That won’t be a barrier moving forward, he said.
“That is going to help unlock a lot of these smaller commercial buildings and opportunities for new small businesses,” Bunch said.
Some community groups in the urban core boundary supported the change, including the Downtown Neighborhood Association. The association had said that most large developments continue to provide at least as much off-street parking that was previously required, despite the city eliminating parking minimums in the central business district years ago.
Peter Carnesciali, president for the association, said in an email to The Star that he’s happy to see the city end an outdated policy to allow developers to decide how much parking their projects need.
“I look forward to seeing better land use in our city to focus on the movement of people,” Carnesciali said in an email to The Star, “not just storage of private property automobiles.”
But other groups suggested the new ordinance is too broad. Jimmy Fitzner, president of the Indian Mound Neighborhood Association in Kansas City’s Historic Northeast, said in a letter to the city planning commission in November that he would support the ordinance if it only eliminated the parking minimums in areas like the Rivermarket, downtown and the Crossroads.
Fitzner said in an email to The Star that he supports reducing the parking minimum, but not eliminating it entirely. His neighborhood already features too little off-street parking for its current housing stock, he said.
“Certain neighborhoods will be forced to oppose new developments if their plans do not include adequate off street parking,” Fitzner said in an email.
Bunch, whose district includes midtown and parts of the Historic Northeast where neighborhood groups pushed back on the change, said those kinds of concerns can be addressed through other city policies, like better enforcement of illegal parking. He said the city’s parking minimum requirement was too blunt of a tool to solve those issues.
