Parking Design Standards w-comment

Model Design Standards for Parking Supply Kennebec Valley Council of Governments October, 2008 This document provides model language for use in writing performance standards for parking on commercial sites. These standards may be used in conjunction with zoning or development review ordinances with suitable review procedures and criteria. These standards are best suited for use in small urban and suburban municipalities. They are intended to demonstrate the range and depth of considerations to be included. The requirements would probably not be suitable for highly urbanized areas, with tiered commercial zones and development types. On the other hand, they contain more detail than a small, rural town is likely to feel necessary, or have the technical capacity to enforce. In general, regulatory standards consist of two types. They can be “performance standards,” i.e. guidelines keyed to the outcome of a site design. Or, they can be “prescriptive standards,” which are more technical and quantitative rules. Standards for parking lots have traditionally been prescriptive, because of their engineered nature, and these standards reflect this history. But, each section also contains a performance standard, to put the prescriptive standards in context. (In towns that routinely grant waivers to rigidly-structured rules, a more secure procedure going forward would be to only grant the waiver upon the finding that the performance standard will ...