Bend councilors unanimously approve downtown parklet license program

City also will further review idea of removing some minimum parking requirements

(Update: Adding video, comments)

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- Bend city councilors unanimously agreed Wednesday night on creating a commercial parklet license program, so that downtown businesses which expanded onto sidewalks and parking spaces to stay afloat can continue to do so.

The city created a temporary program for the use of sidewalks and curbside parking spaces in the right-of-way under the city’s emergency declaration during the COVID-19 pandemic to aid businesses in their ability to remain open and operational amid strict occupancy limits.

With these code amendments, parklets could remain in place, even after the emergency declaration has been lifted or expires.

The city's Licensing Program Manager, Lorelei Williams outlined how the licenses would work for businesses moving forward.

"It would be a non-transferable license requirement, and that's par for the course for licensing programs," Williams said. "These licenses would be required for businesses that want to use parking spaces downtown for more than one week."

Williams says all businesses with existing parklets under the emergency declaration will need to apply under the new code to continue.

The allowed parklets cannot take up more than 5% of the available parking spaces, a 90-space cap, Williams said.

In another parking-related issue, back in February, city councilors agreed to examine the idea of removing parking minimums for some new residential and possibly commercial developments.

Councilor Melanie Kebler brought forth the suggestion, saying parking minimums in the city's development code could reduce the amount of land Bend has available to build badly needed homes, especially affordable housing.

The issue was brought back by city staff as a work session at Wednesday evening's council meeting.

Kebler was joined by city staff to look at how best to proceed, should the city decide to remove any of the minimums, in an effort to create more space for affordable housing units.

According to city Senior Planner Karen Swirsky, at least 121 cities across the country have eliminated parking minimums in all or part of the city.

City Parking Services Manager Tobi Marx says the city is still underutilizing parking.

"We are still underutilizing the (downtown) garage, because we don't have as many permit-holders as before. We are still underutilizing what we call the 'donut' or the 'ring,' which is the outer area of downtown, like Harriman and Northwest Hill (streets)," Marx said. "The same is true around Galveston (Avenue). When we talked with the neighborhood last year, I analyzed the block faces, each one of them, like north and south of Galveston. There is plenty of parking -- we just tend to want to park close to where we want to go." 

Kebler noted that President Biden in his "American Jobs Plan" laid out as one goal to "eliminate exclusionary zoning and harmful land use policies," such as "minimum lot sizes, mandatory parking requirements and prohibitions on multifamily housing," which the administration said "have inflated housing and construction costs and locked families out of areas with more opportunities."

A council subcommittee will review possible options, likely initially focused at first on residential parking requirements in a core area of the city that is being redeveloped.

In other action, the council approved plans to expand use of transient room tax funds beyond tourism promotion, police and fire to tourism-related facilities, such as trail maintenance, as state law allows.