The dense, diverse and affordable future Marty Benson imagines for his neighborhood, he said, can only be unlocked if the city of Asheville eliminates minimum parking requirements.
Benson, a land-use lawyer and affordable housing advocate, stood outside his West Asheville home last week and pointed to the adjacent and mostly empty Michigan Street, where he has counted 220 on-street spaces on seven blocks south of Haywood Road.
With all that capacity, he said, there’s no need for the city mandate to build at least one off-street parking space – usually a slab of concrete or asphalt – for every new residential unit, Benson said.
Getting rid of this rule, along with equally “asinine” minimum lot-size requirements, would free up land for people instead of cars, he said. Property owners could build four-, five-, or six-unit apartment buildings instead of the 2,000-plus-square-foot, $500,000-plus homes that seem to be filling every available lot in West Asheville…