Council Approves Parking Waivers for Historic Sites

Concerned that an increasing number of property owners are letting historic buildings fall into disrepair because of parking requirements, the City Council approved a plan to allow parking waivers.

Under current city law, all homes in the city’s residential district must provide a minimum of two parking spaces per unit, and half of the spaces must be covered.

Because about 250 buildings in the city were put up in the 1920s, long before these standards took effect, property owners often have a problem when they try to upgrade the homes, Associate Planner Jim Pechous said.

“In the past, if a person wants to add onto a historic structure, there was no flexibility in the parking design,” Pechous said. “Now, they can apply for a waiver of the parking requirements.”

To qualify for the waiver, the improvement plan must maintain the architectural style of the historic structure and not drastically alter it, Pechous explained.

“We had landlords saying if they couldn’t do anything to their (historic) property, they would let it run down to the point where it would have to be torn down,” Pechous said.

Most of the city’s historic buildings were built in the mid-1920s by the city’s founder, developer Ole Hanson. His design limited buildings to a Spanish Mediterranean style, with whitewashed stucco walls and red clay tile roofs.