Battle Ground City Councilor Shane Bowman believes apartment complexes lacking in parking are creating a public safety issue when cars “bleed over” into street parking, limiting the width of access into neighborhoods and complexes.
Bowman voted against allowing the Vancouver Housing Authority’s Weaver Creek housing site to have 1.2 parking stalls per unit, under the city’s code of 1.5. The Battle Ground City Council voted 4-2 on Aug. 5 to allow the 1.2 parking stalls per dwelling, which Bowman led an effort to have increased.
During the Aug. 5 council meeting, Bowman said he anticipates the lack of parking could cause a problem for a fire apparatus to access that development. He said he doesn’t want to see that happen at the upcoming Weaver Creek site, adding that a ladder truck may not be able to maneuver into the complex if the streets are filled with parked cars. Also during the meeting, Bowman referenced separate, existing apartment complexes with parking bleed over where he believes fire apparatus could have a struggle with access.
He told The Reflector the city of Battle Ground has tried to model its codes off of nearby cities, but tweak them to the needs of the north Clark County commuter community. But Bowman added that it seems each time a three-bedroom apartment is approved at 1.5 parking stalls, parking is then bleeding over into the streets.
“Apartment complexes in Vancouver, in downtown cores, are where they have bicycle paths, pedestrian walkways, buses, different forms of transportation that may work. OK, we don’t have that here,” Bowman said. “We have a bus that comes through town and takes everybody to Vancouver. … So, we’re a community of commuters and cars.”
Bowman also mentioned the fact that housing costs are causing the younger generations to have more roommates. A three-bedroom apartment with three roommates could rack up the amount of cars quickly, he said.
“That’s the kind of stuff we have to kind of look at as a whole picture,” Bowman said of housing costs and parking. “How do we balance the cost of housing going through the roof for parking?”
Bowman added that the city’s parking issue is not just surrounding apartment complexes, but in the available driveway sizes and garage sizes in newer neighborhoods.
“So we have some standards that I think we should look at because we tend to be a community of larger families with people that have more than one or two kids, which means that your vehicles, a lot of times, are bigger,” Bowman said. “We’re a rural community that has bigger vehicles, trucks and Suburbans and that kind of stuff. And so even when we’re looking at setbacks of houses, we have to take that stuff into consideration.”
He added that a large SUV can’t always fit in a garage in the newly constructed homes, and sometimes not even in the driveway, leading to the vehicle hanging over into the sidewalk, now violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
“Well, you can’t do that because it’s an ADA violation,” Bowman said. “You can’t park it that way, then where do they park? Do they park on the street? And when they park on the street, our street standards have gotten narrower so that we can develop more lots in the subdivision, and so now we worry about getting emergency vehicles down that street because there’s cars parked on both sides and you can’t hardly get through.”
He said the city and council tend to look at the needs of nearby jurisdictions, but Battle Ground might just be different then the other cities.
If the Weaver Creek site were to need 1.5 parking stalls per unit, 18 housing units would then go away from the 100 that are planned. Bowman wasn’t thrilled about the decision to have less parking, especially when he compared current apartment complexes that have 1.5 parking stalls per unit and still cause bleed over into the streets. But removing 18 units from the development would mean 18 families don’t get housing, he said.
“I’ve been around too long to see the developments that we’ve done and know that at 1.5 we have issues,” Bowman said. “At 1.25 I would almost guarantee that we’re going to have issues. And so then guess what happens? They bleed into the neighborhoods, and we say that’s public right-of-way, which it is, and so they park in front of your house and my house. And now we don’t have a place to park.”
