Rebalancing Homewood’s Automobile - Retail - Pedestrian Relationship
How much of Homewood is dedicated to cars? How much is dedicated to people? If an anthropologist dropped to earth right now, they’d argue humans are built to feed the beast of the automobile.
A figure-ground map
The map above is a 3/4 mile square of Homewood’s business district. Based on the areal view above, Homewood has enough parking. For what it’s worth, there is enough parking. The real question is: do visitors of Homewood accept walking as much as a 300 yards from their car to a building? Can people who exit their cars safely walk that 300 yards form their car to a building?
The above map is called a figure-ground diagram. The illustrations are used to show space allocation in an urban environment. The one above shows yellow highlights for moving automobiles and orange is used for showing stationary automobiles.
How much does a parking spot cost in tax revenue?
Homewood city’s revenue comes from sales taxes. Sales taxes are paid on purchases. A decent amount of parking spots contribute to the tax revenue because it makes purchasing more accessible. Too many parking spots, and they will never be used. Thus, each additional parking spot contributes a diminishing returns to sales tax. The prototypical lot with too many returns is the combination of the Arby’s, Demetri’s, and Jack’s parking lots. These lots are never full simultaneously — thus, as a whole the lots reduce the overall tax revenue because they crowd out additional retail.
How do you fix too much parking?
A standard parking spot is 9 feet wide by 18 feet deep. That 162 square feet. The average retail store makes $300 per square foot. That means space of a parking spot should be expected to generate about $48,600 if it was replaced by retail. At Homewood’s 10% sales tax, that is $4,800 per year that is removed from city revenue. Thus, to fix too much parking, do two things:
- Build city parking decks to increase community covered parking
- Setup parking fees for on-street parking on 18th street to incentivize motorists to choose the parking most appropriate — long-term or short-term
- Start a $200 / month tax on private parking spots (or private land used for parking)
