Urban Advisor

The last post focused on creating an urban overlay district for the inner neighborhoods of St. Petersburg. The goal is to create zoning to encourage the development a true urban environment in these neighborhoods. One of the biggest issues will be parking. With all of these new housing units and businesses, where will people park? The ideal is that parking will not be needed, as residents will be able to walk most places. Also, less parking means more room for actual building space.

So how would this work? Within the overlay district will be different parking requirements. Developers would have the opportunity to completely eliminate parking or greatly reduce the parking they are required to provide by paying a mobility fee. This fee would be based on the cost of providing parking, road improvements and alternate forms of transportation. The fee would be less than the cost of parking to incentivize participation. For instance, to reduce parking by 100%, the fee would be 50% of the cost of building the parking. To reduce parking by 50%, the fee would be 75%of the cost of building the parking.

Where would the money go? The money collected would go into a local transportation trust fund. The money in this trust fund would be used for transportation initiatives within the district. One possibility is using the funds as leverage to build a streetcar system that residents could use to move throughout the overly district, and eventually throughout the entire city. The funds could also be used for such things as sidewalk installation and repair, bike lanes and road repaving. Developers would get a greater return on their investment by the ability to build more on their properties. The properties would have greater value from their greater use, increasing tax revenue to the city. The city would also get a new revenue stream for transportation improvements. And the city overall becomes more attractive as an urban environment. Sounds like a winner to me!

So, I always picture St. Petersburg as something of an "urban oasis", a dense urban city, but still maintaining its laid-back feel. I like a walkable city. However, most of St. Pete is not what I consider walkable. Retail is still mostly on a few corridors, major grocery stores are mostly on a few select streets along with the restaurants and such. However, to create the demand needed for more neighborhood-serving retail, there needs to be density. So I thought about the possibility of an urban overlay district for the core of the city. Up-zone an entire swath of the city for single-family attached and small apartment buildings by right along residential roads. The increase in residents will support the mixed-use buildings (retail on ground floor with office and/or residential above) along main corridors, pushing the retail to the street and parking to the rear. So here is where I would do my urban overlay:



Most of these areas are already considered "urban" neighborhoods and have many of these characteristic uses as a legacy of decades past. The zoning just needs to be put in place to support further densification. And I am going to stop there...keeping this post short and sweet.

Here are some examples of what residential streets could look like:

www.fanofthefan.com

www.cityofirving.org