Department of City Planning

The New York City Department of City Planning announced yesterday that the City Planning Commission has approved a measure to reduce Downtown Brooklyn's onerous parking minimums. But the commission, chaired by Amanda Burden, appears to have wasted an opportunity to improve on the timid reforms.

Borough President Marty Markowitz wants to reduce parking minimums in Downtown Brooklyn, and he thinks developers should be able to convert existing parking spots to other uses.

Transit-oriented development is a virtuous circle. New transit infrastructure makes it easier and faster to get to a place, and then that place grows. New development in turn leads to demand to justify better infrastructure, and more tax dollars to pay for it. That, in a nutshell, is the story of how Manhattan grew into what it is today, first around streetcars, then els, and eventually the subways.

"I say my people! I got a story! We tell the TIGER team that this is our territory!"

Parking reform in Downtown Brooklyn doesn't go far enough, said developers at a public hearing last night, and the land use committee of Brooklyn Community Board 2 agreed. They want reduced parking requirements to apply not only to new buildings, as proposed by the Department of City Planning, but also to existing buildings and developments under construction. This would allow developers to convert empty floors of parking into retail, housing, or office space.

The Bloomberg administration has abruptly ruled out the possibility of tearing down the lightly-trafficked Sheridan Expressway and replacing it with mixed-use development, jobs, and parks. Neighborhood advocates and electeds are vowing to fight the decision, which they say fails to follow through on the comprehensive analysis the city promised to conduct as part of a $1.5 million federal grant.

The proposed reduction of parking minimums in Downtown Brooklyn, though seriously insufficient, is good news for housing affordability and environmental sustainability in New York City. But it's terrible news for those hoping to see broader reforms of New York City's parking requirements. If the Department of City Planning felt so politically constrained that it could only halve parking requirements for market-rate units in Downtown Brooklyn, it's hard to see any meaningful change happening in the rest of the city -- unless residents and activists get serious about advocating for real parking reform.

Downtown Brooklyn's mandatory parking minimums would be cut in half for new development and eliminated outright for affordable housing under a plan from the Department of City Planning. The change is significant -- the first rollback of the costly and car-ownership inducing requirements under the Bloomberg administration -- but doesn't go far enough. Even by DCP's own roundabout admission, the reduced parking minimums will still create an unnecessarily large supply of parking.

Downtown Brooklyn could finally get a reprieve from the onerous and outdated parking requirements that have forced developers to build costly, anti-urban garages which sit unused.