Steve Weinshel: Cutting parking requirements while upzoning Broadway will create a crisis

Chicago Tribune

4 days ago

One of the key aspects of Mayor Brandon Johnson's continued push for more housing development in Chicago is eliminating the city's parking mandates for new multifamily housing construction.
It is a major component in Johnson's 'Cut the Tape' initiative intended to boost more affordable housing. While many of us might hope for a utopian future in which the average Chicagoan no longer owns a car, that is distinctly not the current situation. To pretend otherwise invites chaos throughout Chicago.
The Johnson administration is attempting to rush through the City Council an ill-conceived and massive upzoning of Broadway from Montrose to Devon avenues in Chicago's Uptown and Edgewater neighborhoods. This change would allow for an additional 10,000 units to be built along this stretch of Broadway in addition to the thousands of units that current zoning already allows. A cornerstone of this plan is to radically reduce the number of parking spaces required in new large-scale housing developments.
All of Broadway lies within a transit-oriented development zone due to its proximity to the Red Line and several bus lines. As such, developers are required to provide only one parking space per two housing units. But this is only the city's opening hand for reduced parking requirements. Under the city's Connected Communities ordinance, developers may reduce that one parking space per two-unit requirement even further, even down to no off-street parking at all. For example, several projects currently in development or recently completed in Edgewater provide as little as one parking space per 10 units or less.
As a 35-year resident of one of Chicago's densest neighborhoods, I am no stranger to high-density urban living. I live in the Kenmore-Winthrop area of Edgewater, which together with Sheridan Road immediately to the east, is home to roughly 20,000 housing units, making it among the densest census tracts not only in Chicago but also the nation. To contemplate adding 10,000 housing units along Edgewater's adjacent stretch of Broadway with minimal off-street parking requirements constitutes urban planning malpractice. Such lunacy will plague Edgewater for generations to come.
Anyone familiar with the east side of Edgewater knows that street parking is already virtually nonexistent. There is also a major shortage of off-street parking for current households. Many of the buildings in the area were built long before car ownership was common and have little or even no off-street parking of their own.
Residents, even in higher-end condominiums, are forced to seek off-street parking elsewhere, such as in the neighborhood's many four-plus-one apartment buildings. Historically, residents could find such spaces within a block of where they lived. But in recent years, as parking pressures have continued to increase, residents now often have to venture several blocks or more from home to find a rentable space.
As a result, countless drivers now repeatedly circulate throughout the area looking to win the parking space lottery, posing great risk to pedestrian safety and compromising air quality.
The Chicago Department of Planning and Development's proposed framework for Broadway is predicated on the wishful thinking that people living near mass transit are substantially less likely to own cars. But that is simply not borne out by the facts.
Car ownership rate for homeowners in Edgewater is 1.3 cars per owner-occupied household, according to City-Data.com. Ownership rates for renters in the community are somewhat lower but are still 0.9 vehicles per household. Those figures are similar for the Uptown and Rogers Park communities adjacent to Edgewater.
Even data provided by the city as part of its case for the Broadway upzoning framework demonstrates the point that it's creating a parking nightmare. That means more cars will be coming to Edgewater if its 'visions' are realized. Where these vehicles will go is anyone's guess, but city bureaucrats and their housing density mouthpieces try to deny this reality.
Many new residents will likely aggravate current practices of illegally parking in front of fire hydrants, in handicapped zones, blocking alley entrances and corner tow zones that are essential for the passage of school buses and emergency vehicles.
As a major artery for traffic coming off of DuSable Lake Shore Drive, Broadway is already a busy, relatively narrow corridor. It currently has metered parking and numerous business loading zones, but these may soon be disappearing with increasingly dense residential development. Intensified residential development will inevitably bring even more double parking for ride-share and delivery vehicles, which have already exploded in recent years.
Before the city moves forward with any additional housing in Edgewater or Uptown, it needs to carefully study the car ownership rates for residents and limit additional housing accordingly. It could also help its own housing cause by requiring developers to proactively address parking problems by establishing car-sharing programs in new properties.
Most neighborhoods abutting the CTA's Red, Brown and Blue lines on the North Side are already quite dense. Substantial new housing development has already been coming to all of these neighborhoods, especially along major commercial streets such as Broadway, Clark, Ashland, Western, Milwaukee, Irving Park, Montrose and Lawrence, even under old zoning standards. But does this mean these neighborhoods have endless capacity for further densification?
There is a tipping point, and too much development in these communities threatens to greatly diminish the quality of life for future residents as well as the many thousands of current residents who have worked hard for decades to eradicate urban blight in Edgewater.
If the Department of Planning and Development is serious about enhancing Chicago's north lakefront neighborhoods, perhaps it ought to actually do some planning.