Magnolia approves fee-in-lieu parking changes

Magnolia City Council approved changes to its parking-in-lieu program intended to offer developers parking options at the June 10 meeting.

What this means

According to the presentation at the meeting, the program offers developers flexibility regarding parking needs. The proposed program would allow property owners and developers to pay a fee in lieu of providing some or all of the off-street parking spaces currently required by the city’s ordinance.

The intent is to accommodate development on smaller lots in the downtown area where it is often not feasible to meet the existing parking minimums, according to the presentation. Under the plan presented to council, developers would pay a fee on a case-by-case basis.

Diving in deeper

The program was created in 2015 and has not been used as a development option as of March, per the presentation.

According to the presentation, the following changes to the ordinance are recommended:

• Modify language to allow city discretion on capping the policy’s use without tying it specifically to the number of spaces in the lot
• Adding a subsection that specifies that fees paid will not guarantee a specific parking space
• Modify to allow developers to subsidize up to 100% of their parking requirements with in-lieu fees
• Modify to allow fees to be used on lot operations and maintenance and economic development in The Stroll District
• Modify language to remove refunds of fees collected