Robert Benson
DiMella Shaffer designed Fuse Cambridge in Massachusetts with more bicycle parking than car storage.
3. Solve the car challenge. Cars may have become less important with fewer 16-to-19-year-olds getting their driver’s licenses, but many moving into suburban multifamily buildings aren’t yet ready to give them up completely. So, the challenge for developers is how to provide parking and keep rental and sales prices lower than in urban downtowns. “Structured garages usually bring little return, if any,” says Samuel M. Luckino, a principal at the Chicago firm Goettsch Partners. “While the intent of a live/work/play community is to eliminate as much parking as possible—and this is starting to happen—it’s a long way off,” he says.
On average, suburban buildings require more parking spaces per unit—1.5 to 2 spaces versus 0 to less than 1 for their urban counterparts, says Marc A. Moura, senior associate, director of design at Amenta Emma Architects in Hartford, Conn. “This is not just a zoning requirement but a marketing requirement,” he says. The good news, Bozzuto says, is that his firm is designing less parking per building than it did five years ago. Many developers’ solution is to offer only surface parking, sometimes covered, rather than more expensive underground spots.
“There’s a big cost differential between above and below grade,” says Bryan Oos, vice president of development for Toll Brothers Apartment Living, headquartered in Horsham, Pa. To lower costs for a new-construction multifamily project in the west suburbs of Houston, where cars are still necessary, Origin Investments, a private equity real estate firm that develops, owns, and operates multifamily buildings nationally, carefully selected a full-service local contractor as investment partner, which helped lower costs, says Origin partner’s co-founder David Scherer.
Many developers see bicycles as one solution. Moura’s firm included a bike-sharing program on a multifamily project in West Hartford, Conn., and Boston-based architecture firm DiMella Shaffer’s Fuse project in Cambridge, Mass., has more bicycle parking than car storage. The good news is that the new status symbol for some is not to own a car, says Robert J. Gibbs, president, Gibbs Planning Group in suburban Detroit.
