Stop Building Parking In BK Developments Near Subways: Officials

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — A Park Slope official was among a group of lawmakers who called on the city this week to stop building parking spots in new Brooklyn developments near public transit, citing climate change and the need for more affordable housing.

"[The Department of City Planning] should take our concerns seriously and do right by New Yorkers who deserve affordable housing, parks, and other public amenities, not parking," said Park Slope's Council Member, Shahana Hanif, alluding to a letter that she and nine other local leaders sent to the city planning agency Tuesday.

In the letter, lawmakers contended that the city would be able to build more affordable housing, reduce construction costs and carbon emissions, and create additional retail spaces if it cut minimum parking requirements — a 1950s-era provision of the city's zoning law that tired (but largely failed) to reduce congestion.

"Discouraging car ownership in transit-rich neighborhoods will provide more public benefits in the realm of climate change and affordable housing development than personal inconvenience," said Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, who spearheaded the letter alongside north Brooklyn Council Member Lincoln Restler.

Reached for comment about the letter, the Department of City Planning said, "we are working every day to tackle the climate crisis and the affordable housing crisis, and we can’t let parking get in the way of those critical efforts."

"We have made good progress on this front since 2016, and we are eager to work with elected officials across the city and all of our other partners to find creative ways to make our planning more inclusive," added the spokesperson, alluding to a 2016 zoning amendment that eliminated the requirement for parking in new affordable housing developments located near public transit.

That change is one example of how minimum parking requirements have been relaxed in the past through text amendments — a years-long process that the letter's signatories said they support in the long run, but doesn't replace immediate action by the Department of City Planning.

The city's planning agency, lawmakers said, should ask residential developers to add special permits to waive parking requirements in transit-rich areas (a process that's currently carried out basically at random by individual developers).

In nearby Boerum Hill, for instance, a (controversial) mega-project located two blocks from the Atlantic Avenue–Barclays Center transit hub, was initially required to build 200 parking spots, StreetsBlog reported.

The developer was eventually able to waive the requirement, but told the transit advocacy site that the process was long and expensive.

Having the city agency onboard, supporters of the letter said, would make the process of limiting parking spots easier for developers, and help the city achieve its transit and climate goals.

"In the face of a climate crisis, an epidemic of traffic violence causing death and carnage on our streets, and a crippling lack of affordable housing, parking minimums are the exact wrong policy," said Sara Lind, Director of Policy at Open Plans, a transportation non-profit.

"New York City should be doing everything we can to encourage people to use sustainable modes of transportation and to lower housing costs. Eliminating parking minimums is a critical step towards those goals," she added.