City Hall Roundup: Parking Reform, DallasNow Launch Hiccups
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Well, parking reform has finally hit the full city council at Dallas City Hall, and it’s looking to be as contentious and elusive as you’d expect.
Council members got their first briefing as a body on Wednesday, and it’s apparent they’re divided on the hodge-podge proposal hitting the horseshoe. We’ve got the latest on that and some of the other stuff officials were busy with this past week:
A Horseshoe Divided
Staff have been working on reforming the city’s parking code for years now, and while their initial plan to eliminate all parking minimums has been amended to include a list of exceptions, their goal of reducing the number of parking spaces developers are required to budget for their buildings remains.
Proponents of banning or reducing parking minimums claim it will stimulate economic growth, get projects delivered faster, and theoretically result in housing developers passing on savings to their tenants since a smaller parking footprint would mean more square footage could be put to revenue-making use.
Opponents are understandably concerned that less off-street parking would result in dramatically more spillover into neighborhoods, with renters and patrons of local businesses parking their cars in front of single-family homes.
Council Member Cara Mendelsohn (District 12) counted herself among the detractors, calling the proposed ordinance “detrimental” and “ideologically urbanistic.” She suggested it was out of step with the more suburban layout of Far North Dallas.
“My district doesn’t want to be more urbanized,” Mendelsohn said, per KERA News. “We like the suburban feel of things.”
Others on the council were also skeptical, with Council Member Zarin Gracey (District 3) commenting on how Dallas was largely designed around the personal vehicle and some parts of town have significantly more access to public transit than others.
“When we talk about making things walkable, that’s not everybody’s reality. I don’t want us to talk past the unintended consequences of this,” he said, according to Dallas Observer.
There was also concern over the existing proposal’s lack of required handicap parking. The Americans with Disabilities Act mandates handicap accommodations when some kind of service is being provided. Ostensibly, a business that decides to provide no parking whatsoever would not be in violation of the law.
While the current proposal gave some City Hall leaders pause, others were ready to get the show on the road.
“Six, seven years to get a policy through, that’s ridiculous,” commented Council Member Tennell Atkins (District 8), according to The Dallas Morning News.
For his part, Council Member Adam Bazaldua (District 7) pointed out that “concessions have been made” during the many meetings of the various commissions and committees that considered the initial blanket ban on parking minimums.
“What’s being proposed to be approved here in Dallas is not in any way an extreme on either side,” he said, per DMN.
Council members had three different versions of the proposal available to them recommended by the City Plan Commission, the Economic Development Committee, and the Zoning Ordinance Advisory Committee. Check them out for yourself and see how in the weeds this gets.
The full council will meet at City Hall again on Wednesday, May 14, to take the matter back up again.
DallasNow Wraps Up Week One
The city’s new online land management system DallasNow went live this past Monday, but apparently, launch week didn’t go off without its share of hitches.
“As expected during such a significant transition, [Planning & Development Department] did encounter a few minor challenges, primarily related to call volume leading to longer hold times, and minor issues related to the migration of data from the former system,” said Assistant City Manager Robin Bentley in a Friday memo.
“Staff will continue to address any migration issues until resolved, and a priority migration form has been made available here for applicants who would like to request expedited processing,” she said.
On the whole, though, Bentley described launch week as a success, noting the number of new accounts, records, and inspections generated in the system. Nevertheless, there’s still work to be done. PDD is still manually entering pending zoning applications that are on paper into the system.
“This manual entry work will be completed in approximately one week, and the digitization of zoning applications will provide a more streamlined workflow and added transparency for applicants,” Bentley said.
Staff have conducted demonstrations for stakeholders ahead of the launch and plan on offering similar support sessions, both in-person and virtually, through at least May 16.
Meetings Coming Down the Pipeline
On Monday, May 12, the Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Sports Recruitment and Retention will be discussing a staff proposal to update the city’s “Clean Zone” policy, which is basically how it goes about policing “unapproved vendors” in and around a special event. It’s doing so at the request of FIFA ahead of World Cup 2026.
The committee also has a curious closed session item on “financial information that the city has received from a business prospect (‘Project X3’) that the City seeks to have locate, stay, or expand in in or near the City of Dallas and with which the City is conducting economic development negotiations.”
D Magazine speculated last year that Project X (and we assume its variations) could have to do with officials’ bid to keep the Dallas Mavericks in the city limits.
And then, of course, there’s more parking reform on Wednesday, May 14.
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Come on City Council wake up. We are not a NYC, DC, Chicago, Portland, etc where you have a light rail or mass transit that gets you blocks away from your final destination. We are a sprawling city and than means we are car-centric and that means we need parking spaces. Maybe cut down to 1 space per 1 bedroom, and no guest parking, but let’s target these changes in a step process and not throw out parking in one fell swoop. It’s stupid and there are no facts to back up your move. I’m an Uptown resident for over 30 years and we still have major parking issues in these urban areas.