LOS ANGELES—Many property owners are looking for ways to improve the apartment supply by maximizing current property space, but how do you increase you parking requirement if you add new units to your property? Property manager Robert Lopata, the president and co-founder of property management firm LBPM, has been advocating for converting additional lot square footage to legal units, and says that creating bicycle parking may help meet parking requirement on new units.

“Even though you have the lot size, the parking is finite. There is a provision in the Civil Code, which we have utilized, that allows you to add or replace a certain number of parking spaces in your building with bicycle parking. You can do four bicycles for every one space,” Lopata tells GlobeSt.com. “The only condition is that you have to secure it, so you would have to take a storage room. They are quite easy to do.” This is a good method for owners who do not have the right amount of parking to make the change.

Many owners get turned away because of the parking requirement, not realizing during construction of a new unit that they are now required to add additional parking. One of the challenges when you had square footage to your property is that the zoning will require you need to provide additional parking,” Lopata explains. “Often times, there are Q conditions in zoning changes, and often times the city will come in and see what they can get. Often times, the city will try to get an additional parking space.”

One of the ways that owners are able to gain additional square footage is by taking a portion of the alley space, which is often part of the original lot on older properties. When that happens, owners will often need to add significant parking to accommodate the additional square footage. “This solves a huge problem for people, because most of the time, additions get shut down because the owner doesn't have enough parking,” says Lopata.

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Bike Parking Counts Toward Your Parking Requirement

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