Has the City of Tallahassee's minimum parking space requirement for businesses outlived its usefulness? That was the question during a Tuesday night town hall at the city's Smith-Williams Service Center.
With fewer than a dozen citizen attendees, the meeting was short on numbers but long on expertise. Like that of Moore Bass Consulting Project Manager Richard Darabi. He believes dropping the requirement sure makes sense for businesses.
"Essentially, if you can deregulate any one element that seems to have very little negative impact, why not deregulate it and save the expense of going through that process?"
FSU Urban and Regional Planning Professor Michael Duncan thinks businesses are perfectly capable of figuring their own parking needs.
"Businesses have a perfectly good incentive to get the amount of parking right. If they provide too much it's an extra expense they don't need. If they provide too little it affects their business."
City Commissioner Jack Porter supports the change along with Commission Colleague Jeremy Matlow.
"I think where we go from here is to bring it back to the commission for more discussion and hopefully, we can move forward to get even more community feedback."
The next full commission meeting is next Wednesday, June 19th.