Staff responds to community questions about repeal of parking mandates in Lake Oswego

The city of Lake Oswego is continuing on the path toward eliminating, or substantially reducing, parking mandates in response to a state requirement.

The state’s Climate-Friendly and Equitable Communities program has required cities to adopt local policies that “reduce climate pollution, provide more transportation and housing choices, and promote more equitable land use planning outcomes.” Through this process, the state has given local governments a few options for substantially reducing or eliminating parking requirements.

In turn, the city held a community forum Wednesday, July 24 to explain the potential new policies and gauge support.

Last year, the City Council stated a preference for repealing all parking mandates instead of other options that would require the local government to eliminate them only in certain circumstances (like for small commercial properties, mixed-use developments, studios/one-bedroom homes or buildings with historic designation) or picking a few policies from a list of options (like lowering parking requirements to 0.5 spaces per unit for multifamily housing or placing a tax on parking lot revenue).

The City Council and staff have said the full repeal would be the simplest option, require the least amount of staff time and could reduce the cost of development, among other advantages. However, city staff said it could lead to parking overflow in some neighborhoods.

Erik Olson, the city’s long range planning manager, said at the meeting that parking requirements often substantially increase the cost of development. In some instances they require the developer to conduct a parking study and hire a traffic engineer. Olson also said many cities have a parking management problem, not a supply shortage. Council has stated an interest in considering parking management along with the repeal.

During the meeting a few community members expressed concern about a full repeal, worrying that it would lead to an imbalance between housing and available parking — particularly if more dense units are added to their neighborhood.

“Those people aren’t solely going to rely on the bus. They are going to have a car. There has to be some parking provided. The city needs to lean heavily on the developers to provide for that,” one attendee said.

Another attendee suggested that the city consider allocating incentives to developers to provide more parking.

Olson noted that the city sees some benefits to the elimination of parking mandates, but also emphasized that the local government will have to make major changes to parking policy regardless due to state law. He said the city hadn’t yet looked into the idea of providing incentives but noted that doing so may come at a cost to other city services.

City staff also said that, in many cases, developers will choose to provide parking even when not mandated due to market and financier preference. They provided the example of the North Anchor hotel and mixed use project where Urban Development + Partners is planning to include parking even though parking requirements are already effectively eliminated in the downtown core of Lake Oswego (due to a state mandate the city already complies with).

The city plans to adopt new parking policies by the end of this year and public hearings on the matter are slated for October at the planning commission and December for City Council. For more information on the city’s options for reducing parking mandates, visit https://www.ci.oswego.or.us/planning/pp-22-0001-citywide-parking-reform.