Longmont phased out parking minimums and introduced parking maximums to free land for housing

Ben Ortiz, a transportation planner for the City of Longmont, described why Longmont eliminated minimum parking requirements in phases and adopted parking maximums to prevent over‑parking. Longmont moved away from relying on Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) parking assumptions and instead used local data to set policy aligned with housing and multimodal goals.

"Minimum parking requirements come with a lot of negative outcomes," Ortiz said, adding that those outcomes can outweigh the occasional inconvenience of finding a space. He described project examples: a Biolife site that provided about 6 spaces per 1,000 square feet, despite a then‑minimum of 4 per 1,000; and the Harvest Junction South shopping center, a multi‑retailer site frequently parked far below historical minimums.

Ortiz said a local sample of eight multifamily projects showed 724,323 square feet (about 16.63 acres) devoted to parking — roughly 17 football fields — illustrating the opportunity cost of minimum parking requirements and the city's reason for consolidating multifamily parking into a 2‑space maximum per unit. He also cited industry estimates that building a surface parking space can cost about $5,000.

Longmont's approach included asking developers to document demand when requesting variances and using historical occupancy to right‑size standards rather than defaulting to national tables. Ortiz said the strategy was intended to support affordable housing, multimodal travel and reduced stormwater and heat‑island impacts.