SHREVEPORT, La. — Developers and business owners in portions of Caddo Parish will have greater control over how much parking they provide after the Caddo Parish Commission approved changes eliminating government-mandated minimum off-street parking requirements.
The Commission approved Ordinance 6642 during its Oct. 8 meeting as part of a package of zoning measures. The change applies within the parish’s planning jurisdiction rather than throughout all of Caddo Parish.
The amendment follows a similar change previously made within the Shreveport city limits and shifts decisions about parking capacity from government regulations to individual property owners and developers.
Stephen Jean, who addressed commissioners during the meeting on behalf of the planning commission, said the change recognizes that businesses are generally better positioned to determine their own parking needs.
“We’re eliminating that to be something that we dictate as government,” Jean said. “We’re putting [it] in the hands of the market so that individual owners, they know their business models better than we do. They get to determine their own parking.”
Jean said the Shreveport-Caddo Metropolitan Planning Commission supported extending the approach beyond the city after seeing the change implemented within Shreveport.
“They really felt like it was something that would be a benefit to the parish as well,” Jean said.
The ordinance does not eliminate parking itself or prevent businesses and developers from constructing as many spaces as they believe their projects require. Instead, it removes the minimum number of spaces previously dictated through the Unified Development Code in areas covered by the change.
Minimum parking requirements have traditionally established a required number of spaces for developments based on factors such as a property’s use or size. Removing those requirements allows developers to determine parking based on the needs of a particular project rather than meeting a prescribed minimum.
The change could provide additional flexibility for commercial development by allowing property otherwise devoted to required parking to be used for buildings, landscaping or other purposes.
Jean emphasized that the amendment does not apply parishwide.
“It only affects inside the planning limits,” he told commissioners.
The ordinance was one of four zoning measures considered during a combined public hearing at Thursday’s meeting. No opposition to the parking amendment was voiced during the hearing.