Speaker Adrienne Adams’s “City For All” proposal comes as progressives in the Council want more affordable housing out of Mayor Adams’s “City of Yes” zoning change, but experts say that can’t be accomplished if developers are still forced to build costly parking lots at new projects.
“There are pieces for the [City of Yes] proposal that rely on removing parking mandates. If you retained the parking requirements as they are today, then huge pieces of the proposal would be instantly broken, including the town center piece and the transit-oriented development,” said Howard Slatkin, the executive director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council.
“There are a lot of places that are zoned for mixed-use development at relatively low densities, and you can build buildings that have both residential and retail, but you have to provide parking for both uses,” said Slatkin. “You might get housing, or you would get just retail, but you don’t get both. You can’t fit on the surface of the lot both the commercial and the residential parking. You can’t build a mixed-use building with parking for both pieces at that scale. It’s just not going to be remotely economic.”
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