A lot of parking lots already?

While suburbanites often complain about a dearth of parking downtown, Salt Lake City planners are saying enough is enough and are looking to ban future stand-alone parking development downtown.

The ban would mean new, commercial parking lots would be outlawed in the downtown D-1 zoning district with one very strict exception.

"This would eliminate the possibility of basically stand-alone commercial parking lots, especially as the result of demolition," city planner Lee Traughber said.

The problem for city leaders has been that some downtown buildings are old and vacant. It then becomes more economical for owners to tear down the building, pay less taxes on the property and make a few extra bucks by turning the now empty lot into a commercial parking lot.

That was the case last July when Post Office Properties sought to tear down an old building at 43 W. 300 South and turn the lot into a commercial parking lot. At the time, Tony Rampton, an attorney representing Post Office Properties, said that until downtown becomes revitalized there wasn't any economic justification for renovating the existing structures.

But some downtown residents were opposed.

"This area of town is mainly parking lots and few buildings," Maun Alston wrote the Planning Commission. "I don't want to see more old buildings torn down, and we don't need more of this kind of parking. This will further hurt downtown vitality."

In the end the Planning Commission sided with Alston and forbid Post Office from creating a parking lot. The building was still torn down, and there is a vacant lot there now.

Already the city has more than 32,000 parking stalls in a mix of pay lots, street meters and public parking garages, according to the Downtown Alliance.

Donald Adams, economic development director for the Downtown Alliance, said it is arduous for city planners to allow more parking when many of those 32,000 stalls are not being used.

"It would be difficult for the Planning Commission to easily state there was a need (for more parking lots) when we haven't maxed out (the existing spaces)," he said.

And besides being potentially unneeded, commercial parking lots are, for the most part, uncomely, Traughber said. A sea of asphalt is not what tourists and downtown visitors want to see when they visit.

"Parking lots, in the core downtown district, have what I would consider to be a negative visual impact," he said.

Of course, if someone builds a new building downtown, they can also create accompanying parking, Traughber said. But independent parking lots would be banned, except if the lot participated in the Downtown Alliance's parking token program and received the OK from the Planning Commission, which has been loathe to create more stand-alone parking lots in the past.

There is a public open house on the proposed parking lot ban on June 21 from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at the City & County Building, 451 S. State. Following the open house, the proposed ban will be forwarded to the Planning Commission and City Council for possible approval.

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E-mail: bsnyder@desnews.com