On Nov. 1, new parking requirements will be implemented that promote development in the city’s downtown core and reduce the number of public spaces a business is required to supply.

The ordinance reduces the current minimum-parking requirements for new developments from four parking spaces per 1,000 square feet of commercial space to two spaces per 1,000 square feet. It also allows for off-site parking and encourages downtown property owners to buy, sell and swap parking spaces among each other to meet their parking minimums.

The city code changes tacitly promote the construction of a private underground parking facilities downtown by removing maximum parking space restrictions on underground lots.

“The ordinance, in general going forward, is probably a good thing,” said Kevin Dwyer, executive director of the Bainbridge Island Chamber of Commerce. “It will allow for some redevelopment that wouldn’t occur due to current requirements. Reducing (parking requirements) and allowing for offsite parking allows for flexibility, and allows anyone who wants to redevelop to do so without having to add additional parking as part of their square footage.”

The parking space reductions were originally crafted in 2006 when the city was planning to construct a downtown parking garage. However, the code amendments were delayed for two years because the city failed to enact solutions – for parking management and alternative parking – that would offset potential loss of parking spaces along Winslow Way due to the new ordinance and subsequent development.

During that time the city’s proposed parking garage was also postponed indefinitely due to budget constraints.

The lack of a public parking facility means the responsibility of supplying spaces will likely shift to business owners, Dwyer said.

“The city doesn’t have the money for a parking garage so this ordinance throws it back in the hands of the private sector,” Dwyer said. “If a private developer builds a facility that is not going to be free, I’m sure they will charge for that. But I don’t know if there are a lot of businesses willing to step up and create a parking facility in the current economic climate.”

Council member Chris Snow envisioned that major redevelopments of Winslow Clinic or Town and Country Market might provide underground parking that other business owners could rent or buy to fulfill their parking requirements.

“This ordinance makes it possible for builders who are increasing their business space to pay for parking to be built somewhere else,” Snow said. “They simply can contract with someone else. For example, if Larry Nakata used his property to build a new T & C building with parking underground he could partner with near-by landowners who didn’t have space on their property to build parking spaces.”

But, Snow added, the measures are only a “partial solution” to an increasingly complex parking situation in downtown Winslow.

At Wednesday’s council meeting, Councilor Debbie Vancil spoke against letting the ordinance go into effect. She felt the Land Use Committee and the city needed more time to develop and implement off-site parking and parking management options before the ordinance’s implementation.

“The ordinance is going into effect without the accompanying parking solutions that it was meant to have,” Vancil said. “This ordinance was contingent on the parking garage, now we know there won’t be a parking garage, it was never intended as a stand-alone piece.

“What this does is absolutely nothing. It cuts parking availably in the core by half, for development, or redevelopment,” she said.

Hilary Franz led the opposing opinion, citing the ordinance’s long delay and traffic studies that indicate Bainbridge already has enough parking and that more spaces would be conducive to traffic congestion.

“Most rural areas are set at four parking lots per thousand, but two per thousand is usually the peak demand we have downtown,” Franz said. “Currently 41 percent of Winslow is already in parking lots. We don’t need to pave more of downtown. We certainly have a parking management problem, but I’m not convinced we have too little parking. This sets our parking requirements at our peak demand level.”

All council members agreed that, while there may be sufficient parking spaces downtown, those spaces are poorly managed.

“We have a disfunction of parking in Winslow,” Vancil said. “We manage it poorly… we don’t put people in the right places. We want to have folks who do business and shop to have the best parking spots, to have good access.”

“The parking that is available is sort of minimal, and there is no management at all except for a few signs limiting parking to two hours,” Snow said. “We don’t have an aggressive ticketing program and people are fairly safe to park for extended periods of time downtown.”

The Land Use Committee and the city have been looking at a vast array of measures from parking meters to restructuring the Chamber of Commerce’s downtown parking plan for retail employees. Other measures would need to address spill-over parking in neighborhoods near downtown and the implementation of a city fee-in-lieu program which would allow business owners to pay into a city pool that would be used toward parking solutions, Snow said.

Despite the lack of alternative parking measures, proponents of the ordinance believe it will set a fire under the Land Use Committee and the city to start implementing new regulations.

“”I thought it was time to move ahead on this rather than wait any further. There is nothing to indicate that six months or even nine months of more planning would lead to any movement on those (parking management) points,” Snow said. “Having this go into effect will spur movement on other parking management points and encourage non-governmet provision of additional parking spaces.

“There is no shortage of ideas; they just haven’t been addressed and implemented,” Snow said.