It’s no secret that Baton Rouge has a shortage of parking—not only downtown, where the lack of available spaces has been well-documented, but in many small and mid-sized retail developments.
Take it as a sign of a healthy economy. Still, it’s a frustration for motorists, to say nothing of property owners. A little-known change in the city-parish zoning code, however, has made it easier for at least one shopping center to create additional parking spaces. Jon Claitor is adding 123 additional parking spaces on 26,000 square feet of available space located behind his Acadian-Perkins Plaza shopping center at the corner of South Acadian Thruway and Perkins Road. The spaces will be dedicated for employee parking so that more of the shopping center’s main lot will be freed up for patrons.
Claitor says a change in 2013 to the city-parish Unified Development Code allows shopping centers to dedicate 40% of available parking spaces for compact cars, compared to 20% in the past. By reconfiguring the space to account for more compact parking, Claitor says he’s able to create more spaces overall.
As to why parking is such a problem for so many retailers, Claitor can only speak for his shopping center, which has seen an increase in traffic since the opening last summer of The Purple Cow, a trendy second-hand clothing store. He says his new employee parking lot will be completed by mid-January. —Stephanie Riegel
