How parking lots across the U.S. are being turned into housing

Thanks to Pam P.

And not a moment too soon.

BY ADELE PETERS

Right now, there are probably between 700 million and 2 billion parking places in the U.S. But the sea of American parking lots is slowly shrinking.

In Los Angeles County, for example, parking took up around 200 square miles of land in 2010—an area larger than Denver—including nearly 10 million off-street, nonresidential spaces. Since then, nearly 20,000 parking spaces have been sold for redevelopment, a small but still meaningful amount.

Many former parking lots are turning into housing. (Some are also becoming parks, in cities including Dallas and Detroit; in San Diego, part of one parking lot has been restored to a salt marsh.) And as cities realize that they’ve built more parking than they need, dozens have eliminated parking requirements in new buildings. In California, any new construction near public transit no longer has to include parking. That means there’s room for more apartments, and rents can be lower. Here are nine recent parking lot transformations.

[Photo: Grubb Properties]

CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA: LINK APARTMENTS MONTFORD

Built at a former office park with large parking lots, this development renovated the offices, and then repurposed the parking lots for new housing. After the first two phases of construction, there are 553 new housing units. “By purchasing the office buildings and then rezoning the land for multifamily use, we essentially got the land for free,” says Emily Ethridge, communications director for the developer, Grubb Properties. “This is particularly powerful in urbanizing parts of cities like this one where land is expensive. In these areas, surface parking is a very poor use of that precious resource.”

[Photo: Jonathan Ramirez Archlenz Photography/courtesy KFA Architecture] (continued)