- Omaha's planning board recommends reducing required parking to one spot per new housing unit
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) – Omaha's planning board is recommending a reduction in the number of required parking spots for new housing units — a change that could affect neighborhoods across the city.
The board is recommending the number of required parking spots for new housing units be reduced to one spot per unit, whether it is a one-bedroom apartment or a house.
Dani Dross lives one block away from a new apartment complex in the Little Bohemia neighborhood and said the parking problems there could spread citywide.
"Even though there are signs that say that you can't park in the alleyway, there's a lot of parking there because they don't have sufficient parking in the building itself," Dross said.
Dross said the proposed minimum would not be enough.
"That's not sufficient. In some of these units, there could be, you know, three, four, however many people living in them, and if all those people drive and all of them have individual vehicles, there's nowhere to put them," Dross said.
Developer Ryan Basye said reducing the parking requirement could make new units cheaper to build.
"They're saying we could go from two parking spots to one parking spot. So essentially that cuts our price in half plus or minus. And for one stall, off street is about $4000," Basye said.
Zeke Rouse, a policy fellow at Spark, a non-profit focused on revitalizing neighborhoods through development, said the change could have broader benefits.
"That just allows more housing to be developed, it allows for more walkable cities, less urban sprawl, less heat islands," Rouse said.
Councilmember Ron Hug said he expects the proposal to appear on the city council agenda within the next six to eight weeks.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
