No Minimum Parking Requirements? No Problem for Fayetteville, Ark.
In 2015, the city council of Fayetteville, Arkansas, adopted a radical but simple idea: do away with minimum parking mandates and let businesses decide for themselves how much parking they need.
The average person walking down the main drag of Dickson Street might be surprised to learn that this growing city of 94,000 was perhaps the first city in the nation to eliminate commercial parking minimums citywide. Striking the section of zoning code that detailed how many parking spots each business was required to provide created new opportunities for local entrepreneurs. The ordinance, which left maximum parking ratios in place, did not spur a frenzy of redevelopment, nor did it bring a malady of parking complaints and plummeting home values, as the city attorney had warned.
“Our experiences have been somewhat anti-climactic,” city planner Quin Thompson said.