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Planning Commission • Planning Case No.461-96: Mounds View Square October 8, 1996 Page 6 4.0 and 5.0 spaces per 1000 square feet; and for storage space 1.0 spaces per 1000 square feet. Restaurants are between 80-100 square feet for dinner house style restaurants. Staff conducted a survey of some suburban communities in the Twin City area. These included : Crystal, Roseville, Mendota Heights, Maplewood, Woodbury and Coon Rapids. Typical ratios for retail space are 4.5 to 5.0 per 1000. No one has ratios as high as 10 to 1000 as does Mounds View. The one city using a square footage ratio for restaurants, Crystal, uses one space per 60 square feet without dividing between kitchen and dining. The chart above shows how the parking requirement would change if these ratios were applied to Mounds View Square. The number of parking spaces required would be range between 573 and 581, depending on whether the ratios are applied to all of the square footage or only to the new square footage. The applicant is proposing 454 spaces. The applicant has applied for a variance in the schedule of off-street parking requirements which would be applied to this shopping center, and for a conditional use permit to allow the joint use of parking facilities and driveways as is allowed by Section 1121.15 of the Zoning Code. The remainder of this report analyzes these two requests to determine if adequate parking is available to allow the additional square footage requested by the • applicant. Variance in Parking Ratios (Planning Case No. 463-96) The criteria for granting of variances are stated in Section 1125.02 Subd. 2 and noted below along with staff comments. a. Exceptional or extraordinary circumstances apply to the property which do not apply generally to other properties in the same zone or vicinity and result from lot size of shape, topography or othcr circumstances over which the owners of the property since the effective date hereof have had no control. c. That the special conditions or circumstances do not result from the actions of the applicant. Mounds View Square is the largest shopping center in Mounds View, and it is in this shopping center that the effect of a higher-than-typical parking ratio, established by the City, has its greatest effect. The shopping center has been operating successfully at a much lower ratio (4.67 spaces per 1000 gross square feet)than is required for retail space in the City's parking regulations (10 spaces per 1000 square feet). A parking demand study completed in 1989 by Benshoof and Associates reported that the Urban Land Institute performed in-depth research on a combined total of approximately 170 shopping centers. (This study is a part of the file on the rezoning for Hardee's Restaurant.) This • research showed that a parking ratio of 4.0 spaces per 1000 square feet is adequate for all