Cohousing-L Mailing List: Parking configurations (was Re: Controversy over ...)

[David G Adams (dadams]

> > Me:
> > Sounds great!  What I meant to say is that garages at least hide cars wi
> > them.  The Cornerstone site currently has no parking lot, driveways, or
> > garages.  The cars (mostly trucks) all pull up on what would be the 
> > sidewalk.  It makes what ought to be a beautiful hillside into a mess.  
> > think all we'll be able to do is make the "streets" much thinner, and se
> > a couple of areas of head-in parking.  There's no space for parking on t
> > outsides of the community.

> Pablo:
> I guess I don't understand what you're saying. Surely the town of Arlingto
> will require that you supply enough dedicated parking to have at least two
> spaces per house (?). I'm also confused about Cornerstone in general. What
> stage of development are you in?
> 
Arlington is pretty much developed to the hilt.  For example, Stop & Shop is 
offering to pay the town $4M for a small parcel of land used occasionally 
for practice fields for sports, just so Stop & Shop can expand itself into a 
Super Stop & Shop.  There are no open spaces except for parks and wetlands. 
 We have identified a site which currently contains 20 duplex homes, owned 
by 1 owner, and all rented out.  There are no "parking lots", just on-street 
curbside parking (except that there aren't any curbs). The homes are on two 
private roads.  Arlington does not allow any overnight parking on public 
streets, but private roads make their own rules.  We are still building 
membership and negotiating with the owner of the site.  The preliminary 
architect's drawings we have make the roads much thinner, turn some of the 
roadsides into head-in parking, and turn some of the roadsides into grass 
and flowers.  It's hard to describe in words.

As far as needing 2 car spaces / household, preliminary discussions with the 
town planner have indicated that the town is willing to be flexible.  I 
think we could get away with 1.6 spaces / home or so.  We want to limit 
parking because we have so little green space, but we don't want to run out 
of spaces either.  How many cars do other groups have for how many 
households, and how many visitor cars need to be planned?

Dave

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  |\/\/\/|  David G. Adams   
  |____  |  U4 Consulting
 OO    ) |  Arlington, MA
 (       |  dadams [at] world.std.com
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