Developers who save existing trees in the parking lots of their developments will get a break on the number of parking spaces they are required to create, under a proposed change to the city-parish zoning code.
The proposed change is among several incentives the city-parish Planning Department is trying to write into the parking and landscape chapters of the city-parish’s zoning code in order to encourage more shade in parking lots.
“We are trying to reduce the sea of asphalt in and around buildings,” says Planning Director Frank Duke. “People like to park under shade. Louisiana is hot.”
Another proposed incentive would require developers to plant fewer new trees on the grounds of their projects if they save old ones.
“An existing Live Oak will have far greater impact than planting a new one,” says Duke, adding that the American Society of Landscape Architects has been involved in advising the city-parish on such changes.
For more than a year the Planning Department has been rewriting the city-parish zoning code, as was called for in the 2010 FuturBR land use plan. Later this month, the Planning Commission will take up the proposed revisions to the parking and landscaping requirements in the zoning code. If the commission approves the changes, as expected, the Metro Council will take them up in July.
Besides creating incentives for more trees in and around new buildings and redevelopment projects, the code revisions would change the number of parking spaces that businesses are required to provide, reducing those requirements of buildings in older neighborhoods. Under the existing zoning code, all businesses, regardless of the neighborhood in which they are located, must follow the same standard for parking spaces.
The proposed changes would reduce the number of spaces required of buildings in older neighborhoods, and would grandfather in any businesses built before the city had a parking requirement, effectively allowing them to provide no parking.
Currently, developers have to get a zoning waiver if they want to redevelop an old structure that doesn’t have a parking lot, a situation that Duke says discourages redevelopment in older neighborhoods.
“Some of these changes are being made in order to encourage redevelopment in older neighborhoods,” he says.
Overall, the Planning Department’s zoning code revision process is taking longer than originally anticipated, but the agency continues to plow through it. So far, three chapters of the code have been revised and approved by the Metro Council. Three additional chapters, including those regulating parking and landscaping, are in varying stages of the adoption process. The final four chapters are in the process of being rewritten.
—Stephanie Riegel
