A detailed assessment of parking demand at local-serving, neighborhood and community shopping centers in fairfax county, virginia, is presented in this paper. The objective of this work was to developa reasonable, accurate, and easily implemented parking standard forthese retail centers. Neighborhood and community shopping centers differ from regional shopping centers because they are primarily smaller and contain local-serving retail uses such as supermarkets, drugstores, and other service-oriented tenants. This study collected parking survey data on weekdays and saturdays during june, october, and december at more than 30 neighborhood and community shopping centers throughout fairfax county. In total, over 2, 000 hourly observations of parking demand were taken at these centers. Peak parking ratesat these centers were compared with their retail and tenant characteristics including the center size, the type of anchor store, the amount of use devoted to restaurants, and the presence of freestandingbuildings. The results of this study indicated that a base parking rate of 4.0 Spaces per 1, 000 sq ft of gross leasable area (gla) would provide adequate parking throughout the year at almost all neighborhood and community shopping centers, regardless of most of the factors studied. The only consistent exception to the 4.0 Base rate occurred at centers where more than 15% of their gla was devoted to restaurant uses and additional parking would be needed. At these centers, the higher parking demand generated by their restaurants dominatesthe parking demand of the center's other retail uses. This paper appears in transportation research record no. 1299, Hov facilities andtransportation systems management 1991 .
Abstract