A re-do of Crossing Oaks Shopping Center is certainly needed, and I hope they create something much, much better, but I doubt they'll do anything more than the Mattress Firm/Starbucks/Chipotle/AT&T/GNC garbage we've seen a lot of the last few years. In 2015 and 2016, I did a lot of number counting, and this place stuck out more than most for its obscene amount of parking spaces.
I included this shopping center in my comments regarding the zoning code update, using this as an example of what we've done wrong.
Crossing Oaks was built in 1978 and occupies the southwest corner of one of the busiest intersections in town, 71st & Memorial. It contains 227,391 square feet of retail, restaurant and car service space situated on 24 acres. The parking lot contains 1,108 spaces, and is one of the least utilized in Tulsa. I analyzed a series of aerial images from 2004 to 2015, during which time the parking lot is never more than 19.9% full, and that was back in 2004. Its utilization has fallen since then. The average occupancy for this 12-year span is 15.1%.
Date of Aerial Image Parking Spaces Occupied
October 6, 2004 19.9% (221)
March 28, 2010 14.1% (156)
June 8, 2011 17.0% (188)
August 9, 2012 16.1% (178)
February 4, 2013 14.9% (166)
March 29, 2015 14.0% (155)
September 10, 2016 7.2% (80)
November 25, 2016
* 17.2% (191)
*Black FridayOn Black Friday, a friend of mine took photos of Crossing Oaks (and other shopping centers in South Tulsa). Here's a bleak view of this space:
You may think this kind of thing couldn't happen again--we've got a new zoning code, after all--but it can. If this shopping center were rebuilt with the
new minimum number of parking spaces (3.33 spaces per 1,000 sq ft and 8.50 for restaurants), it would still need to provide at least 930 parking spaces, and that's only if it no new restaurants or bars* were included in the new center. Add a new Chipotle (2,530 sq ft), Starbucks (2,000 sq ft), and a bar (2,000 sq ft), and the number of required spaces creeps up to 988. Just as a reminder, this failing shopping center currently has 1,108 parking spaces.
If rebuilt as-is (no changes to use, and no additions), the parking lot would be at least 83.9% the size of the current lot. If re-built with the Starbucks, Chipotle, and bar added, it would be at least 89.2% of its original size. That is not a big difference between the old code and the new code. We are still requiring developers to spend a fortune on wasted land to satisfy outdated minimum parking requirements. The average cost of a surface parking space is around $8,000. The parking lot in this 'new' shopping center would cost around $7.4 million ($7.9 million if we throw in the Starbucks, Chipotle, and bar).
The truth is, we can't hope for something transformative in any part of town until we stop requiring an obscene amount of parking. We need to eliminate parking requirements altogether,
like Buffalo recently did. Until that happens, we need to seriously consider cutting current parking requirements in half (or more - there are some ridiculously high minimum parking ratios in our new zoning code).
Here's how this shopping center's parking utilization rate compares to other commercial properties in Tulsa I've analyzed:
Tulsa Parking Utilization by
Daniel Jeffries, on Flickr
Fun fact: The size of a 90° nose-in parking space plus half of a 20' wide drive lane is 252 sq ft. When adding entrances, exits and other driveable but non-parkable areas, it's closer to 300 sq ft, which means our zoning code requires 999 sq ft of parking space for every 1,000 sq ft of retail space; 2,550 sq feet of parking space for every 1,000 sq ft of restaurant space; and a whopping 3,375 sq ft of parking for every 1,000 sq ft of a bar. Talk about a waste of space!
*Restaurants are required to provide more than 2.5 times the amount of parking as retailers (8.5 spaces per 1,000 sq ft); and bars are required to build even more (11.25 spaces per 1,000 sq ft).