By Lee Shappell | Tempe Tribune
Tempe might not be trying to put the genie back in the bottle over reduced parking minimums at new downtown high-rise residences in its dense urban core, but it wasn’t quite ready to go to the extreme the developer of a project at College Avenue and Seventh Street had sought, either.
Without question less will be more in parking for downtown projects as the city attempts to get cars off the streets and encourage multi-modal means of transportation.
Downtown Tempe is building a walkable core. Those who live or visit now find just about everything they need within a five-block walk. There also are the Tempe streetcar as well as several stops along the Metro light rail downtown, Orbit circulator buses, plus Uber, Lyft, Waymo and bicycling options to move people.
But when Eran Fields, principal at his Los Angeles-based Fields Holding, proposed 36 parking slots for his then-13-story, 239-unit College & Seventh mixed-use building, that was a bit extreme even for Tempe.
After the first reading of his Planned Area Development Overlay in front of City Council on March 7, city staff asked Fields to revisit the number.
