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So there will be a certain number of parking stalls required, for example, for amulti-family <br /> <br /> building. The County Council-initiated amendments to the Zoning Code would increase the <br /> <br /> number of required off-street parking stalls for vazious categories; and that's Bi1179 that's in <br /> front of you. And in some respects these very greatly increase the number of stalls that aze <br /> required. The Department took a look at this, and agrees to some extent that some of the off- <br /> street pazking requirements in the current Zoning Code are too little, but disagrees with some of <br /> the changes as far as the extent of those changes. <br /> To talk about the points of disagreement for the moment, under the current pazking requirements <br /> for a retail commercial building, you need one stall per 300 squaze feet of gross retail floor <br /> space. The Council bill would require one per 100 square feet of retail space, which is about the <br /> tripling of the current requirements. To give a ballpark idea, many of the big box establishments <br /> like the Hilo Wal-Mart have one to 200, if you have an idea of that. And many commercial <br /> establishments in recent years have put in more parking than is required by the Zoning Code, <br /> simply because of their own analysis of their needs. So the Council bill would, for example, <br /> require, say the Hilo Wal-Mart parking lot to be roughly twice the size that it is. <br /> What the Planning Depaztment's bill suggests is that the requirement for restaurants be increased <br /> to one to 100 square feet. There have been some problems with restaurants, and if you look at <br /> the - we refer to national parking standards that do have more pazking requirements for <br /> restaurants because of higher turnover - and if you think about the seating in a typical restaurant <br /> versus the density of people in a typical retail establishment, you have a lot more people per <br /> square foot typically. So we are proposing one to 100 square feet for the category of restaurants. <br /> Multi-family buildings, the current Code requires 1'/< parking stalls per unit for amulti-family <br /> building. We agree that this is unrealistic in today's world. Many of the buildings that have <br /> been built in the last few yeazs have provided more. We think that a good number would be 2 <br /> plus 10 percent for other guests and loading-type spaces. The Council bill is 2'/Z. <br /> There are also changes that both bills propose for hotels. This was heard a couple of weeks ago. <br /> We looked at it, and made a couple of slight changes that for duplexes that there be two per unit <br /> with 10 percent additional guest parking, rather than 2.5. This would be the same as our <br /> recommendation for multi-family units, leaving the requirement for rooming and lodging houses <br /> at one per two beds, rather than one per one which is in our last draft. <br /> And then there had been a provision included in our recommendation at the last meeting that was <br /> not actually put in our version of the ordinance; and that recommendation was a way to handle <br /> nonconfonming buildings. This becomes an important issue with something like parking because <br /> if you increase the number of required pazking spaces, say an existing apartment building, for <br /> example, that had the minimum number of spaces or less than the new requirement becomes a <br /> nonconforming building. This is fine as long as the building is there. But if the building burns <br /> down or is destroyed in a hurricane or something, then it has to be built to the new standazds. <br /> This can cause problems for things like the insurability and for insurance payments on a <br /> building. And our recommendation to avoid hardship is simply to say that a building that's made <br /> nonconforming because of changes in the parking requirements can still be rebuilt to the same <br /> footprint that was before. <br /> 2 <br /> <br />