General meeting #7 – the long awaited parking minimums one

This is the 7th general Nashua Strong Towns meeting. If you’re on the email lists – you saw this coming. In this meeting we will be discussing parking minimums. A topic that has garnered a lot of attention over the last few months when there was an initial discussion to reinstate parking minimums in downtown.

The city is set to re-evaluate parking in downtown next year either way – as removal of parking minimums in D1/MU zoned areas (the only areas like it in the city with no parking minimums) were meant to be temporary, and will likely be re-added without push back and a proper discussion around how we can make it easier for residents to not own cars.

Given the new form based zoning ordinance is likely be released in a month or two for public comment, and will probably continue to have parking minimums in it, this will be a point of contention.

In this meeting we will discuss plans on how the town can best proceed to keep parking minimums out of downtown and depending on how much we discuss – removal of parking minimums in the rest of the city.

It is important we do this in a productive way though, and this meeting is intended to give us time to brainstorm solutions to the parking problems the town is having, without feeding into the cycle of car dependency. These are solutions we can later discuss with the town.

Effectively – how can the town incentivize folks living downtown and in the surrounding areas to own fewer cars while not making their life more difficult?

For this meeting feel free to bring just yourself, but if you would like to amp up the discussion we recommend bringing:

• Examples of cities that have started densifying like Nashua, and successfully overcame with transportation needs while not needing parking minimums
• Examples of ways to make car-free and car-lite living in Nashua downtown (and elsewhere) easier with a limited town budget

Our goal is to have a productive conversation and provide examples to the city of Nashua how to best proceed without implementing parking minimums.

This meeting will also be in the Nashua Public Library activity room. Food is allowed in this room so sweets will be provided to foster the best discussion!