Rochester eyes more car-free living for its booming downtown

ROCHESTER - This city could see fewer parking spaces included in future downtown housing projects as elected officials eye making the city center less car-dependent.

That may not work as well as the Rochester City Council hopes, city staff cautions.

With a new bus rapid transit line set to go online in the next two years, the city of Rochester is debating whether to relax parking space minimums for future projects as some on the council would like to bolster housing and move away from having so many cars downtown.

“We do have a new world with the rapid bus transit coming up,” Council Member Shaun Palmer said. Palmer shared concerns that parking requirements are pushing up housing costs for developers as amenities like underground parking can get expensive to build.

A majority of members signaled earlier this week that they’d like to repeal parking minimums downtown as part of a city zoning code update.

Downtown parking has been a sore point for years, as residents and businesses fret there are too few spaces. It was one of the bigger issues brought up by a downtown task force formed in 2023.

Yet city staff say there’s ample parking for visitors — almost 6,000 spaces, a little more than half of which are found in Rochester’s six downtown parking ramps.

That’s due in part to the city’s mandatory parking minimums in housing projects, at least half a space for every unit built. Rochester has approved and repealed parking rules over the years based on need — the city did away with regulations in the ’90s, but brought them back in 2012 to protect spaces for the public.

About 1,500 of the city’s 3,500 ramp spaces are taken up through contracts. The remaining spaces are usually enough for public use at about 80% capacity on average, but “it varies from day to day” according to Noloan Schild, the city’s parking systems manager.

At the same time, developers often have to include at least some parking if they want to secure financing. Justin Fincher, a vice president for Twin Cities-based developer Reuter Walton, told city officials last month at a hearing for the upcoming CityWalk Apartments project his company likely couldn’t get a bank loan if it didn’t include parking plans in its proposal.

Council Member Nick Miller pointed out that a number of communities across the U.S. over the past decade have relaxed their parking minimums to focus less on car traffic. Miller said he hopes the city can negotiate more rental contracts if developers need parking space, while doing away with underground parking costs would likely encourage more affordable housing projects.

Council Member Andy Friederichs, who owns several apartment buildings, said people who want to live downtown more often than not don’t have cars anyway.

“We’re building the core of our city to be all public-transit friendly, and to be walkable,” he said. “To mandate any parking in the downtown area to me, especially from a developmental standpoint, is just not necessary.”

Not everyone was in favor of dropping minimums, however. Mayor Kim Norton urged more caution as developers may not take future residents into consideration if they don’t have any requirements to provide parking.

“I don’t think it’s realistic to assume that no one in downtown wants cars,” she said, arguing people may decide to park in nearby neighborhoods and cause congestion.

Council President Randy Schubring said he favors relaxing parking standards but believes there have to be more safeguards as the city needs more information on how parking is used downtown.

“We don’t even know if there’s going to be, in the short term or the long term, capacity for developments to use our city parking,” Schubring said. “We have to make sure that we know who’s using it and when ... and if they are reserving a spot, that they are paying for that spot.”