The Kirkland City Council approved a “right-size parking” ordinance on Tuesday that alters the parking requirements for multi-family residential developments.

Before the vote, the city’s standard was 1.7 parking stalls for every unit. In the central business district, the current multi-family parking requirement is one stall per bedroom with minimum average of 1.3 stalls per unit, plus 0.1 stalls per bedroom for visitor parking.

The new standards require 1.2 stalls for a studio, 1.3 for a one bedroom, 1.6 for two, and 1.8 stalls for a three-bedroom unit.

These standards apply everywhere in the city except for the Yarrow Bay Business District 1, where the South Kirkland Transit Oriented Design Site is located, which is on a case-by-case basis.

The ordinance increases the base minimum parking by 10 percent, to be set aside for visitors.

Under the new rates, if a development required less than one full parking stall, developers wouldn’t have to build a stall if there is street parking within 600 feet of the property. If a developer wanted to reduce their amount of parking required, they can do a parking demand study of similar sites. The results of the parking demand would have to be increased  by 15 percent, with an additional 10 percent guest parking.

The Planning Commission recommended excluding the Totem Lake Business District and North Rose Hill from the new standards, while allowing developers the option to do a parking study for possible modifications. The council also supported applying the rates there, as well.

“Totem Lake Urban Center is a vision of the future,” Councilmember Toby Nixon said at the council’s July 7 meeting. “It’s not real today. There’s basically no streets that allow on street parking. It should be what we said. You have this base policy with the option of allowing a modification.”

The ordinance originally would have provided a 15 percent reduction of required parking for developments within half a mile of the downtown transit center, but the language was ultimately removed.

During a study session by the council at its Feb. 4 meeting on a right size parking ordinance proposal, councilmembers discussed the study the Planning Commission claimed found a surplus of parking stalls in residential developments. The study itself was based on the King County’s Right Size Parking (RSP) project, which discovered the same surplus. Some residents, however, have criticized the study’s findings for what they feel were unaccounted variables, with others having stated that the proposed changes would reduce the amount of parking in the city.

Late last year, the Kirkland Alliance of Neighborhoods voted unanimously to request public comment be extended on the proposed ordinance to allow more input from neighborhood residents.

The Planning Commission first took up the matter at a study session in November 2013 with the Houghton Community Council.  Kirkland is expected to have 7,300 new multi-family housing units by 2035, according to the King County Growth Countywide Planning Policy growth targets.