Builders and developers who are turning back to urban areas and close-in suburbs for construction opportunities are finding an age-old nemesis in their path: Where to put additional parking.

In the past decade developers have found increasing resistance to placing new residential tracts in undeveloped farm and woodland areas. One of the many pluses to those tracts has been the virtually unlimited ability to accommodate parking.

As rural and deep suburban resistance has grown, however, along with the fees to break ground, more builders have chosen to return to the inner-ring suburbs and urban settings to find acreage.

While in-fill development has become a relatively inexpensive alternative to outer-ring land tracts, an emerging key concern is where to put the additional vehicles,

"Because of land costs and the often limited availability of on-street parking, apartment parking issues most commonly arise in the in-fill development proposals," say economists from the National Multi-Housing Council.

"Many of these proposals are for high rise luxury apartment buildings in locations with access to public transportation."

According to an NMHC study, apartment dwellers tend to have fewer vehicles than their home-owning counterparts.

The average number of vehicles per apartment dwelling nationwide is 1.0, while the number of vehicles per detached single-family home is 2.1.

As might be expected, vehicle ownership among apartment dwellers in the outer ring is higher than at the urban core: Suburban apartment dwellers have 1.2 vehicles per apartment while more urban dwellers have 0.9 vehicles per residence.

Approximately 29 percent of all apartment renters to do not own a vehicle.

The NMHC warns that apartment developers can expert more friction with zoning boards as more developments come to table.

"Proposals for high-rise infill development with one parking space per apartment often face resistance form neighbors and local authorities," researchers say. "But the (national average of one vehicle per apartment) suggest that this is a very ample amount.

"Apartment developers occasionally include more parking than required by zoning, when their experience indicates that it will be required. Some jurisdictions seeking to promote the use of public transportation will, however, restrict the number of parking places below the number that the developer anticipates will be required."

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Published: February 7, 2000

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