A bank parking lot sits empty every evening and weekend. The church across the street has 300 spaces that fill on Sunday morning and stay vacant the other six days. An office building lot empties at 5 PM and remains unused until the next workday.
Meanwhile, nearby restaurants struggle with dinner crowds. Weekend tourists circle blocks hunting for parking. Evening entertainment venues turn away customers who can't find spots.
Shared parking agreements solve both problems simultaneously. Private lot owners monetize underutilized spaces during off-peak hours while municipalities gain parking capacity without construction costs.
Building public parking costs $15,000-$40,000 per space for multi-level structures. When cities leverage existing private parking through shared agreements, these expenses disappear. One city avoided a $40 million public garage by implementing shared access to 10,000 existing private spaces.
Studies show shared parking reduces required spaces by 20-40% in mixed-use areas. That capital gets freed up for housing, parks, or transit improvements instead of parking structures.
Every lot has utilization patterns. Peak hours when primary users need spaces. Dead hours when it sits mostly empty. Shared parking captures revenue during those dead periods.
The office building charges evening rates to restaurant customers. The church rents weekday capacity to nearby businesses. The retail lot serves residential permit parking overnight after stores close.
Revenue arrangements vary. Some municipalities lease private lots and keep parking fees. Others split revenue 50/50 with property owners. In-lieu fee programs let developers pay into shared parking funds instead of building dedicated spaces.
Traditional parking mandates force developers to dedicate valuable land to vehicle storage. A 50-unit apartment building needs 75 parking spaces under typical zoning. This requirement increases costs by $30,000-$150,000 per structured space, making projects financially infeasible.
Shared parking eliminates this waste. When nearby private lots provide off-peak capacity, new developments need fewer dedicated spaces. Denser development generates more property tax per acre than surface parking.
Buffalo, Hartford, Minneapolis, and San Francisco removed parking minimums and encouraged shared parking. Each saw increases in downtown housing and commercial development on land formerly wasted on underutilized parking.
Dedicated parking for each business creates inefficiency. The lunch spot fills 11 AM to 2 PM and sits empty otherwise. The dinner restaurant needs capacity 5-10 PM but has empty asphalt all day.
Shared parking serves both. Higher utilization throughout the day. More customers access businesses during peak hours. Better parking availability increases spending and municipal sales tax revenue.
Parking Benefit Districts reinvest shared parking revenue into sidewalk improvements, transit, and streetscape beautification. These enhancements attract more visitors, creating cycles of increasing demand and revenue.
Most private parking assets already exist in downtowns. They just need agreements capturing value from complementary use patterns instead of sitting empty 60-80% of the time.
Use our revenue calculator to estimate what your underutilized parking spaces could generate through shared parking agreements based on off-peak hours and complementary demand patterns.