By Ian Donnis, Published September 3, 2024
“Standing on Broad Street in Cumberland, Jennifer Hawkins looks up at the former St. Patrick’s Church. Hawkins leads the nonprofit developer ONE Neighborhood Builders, which is renovating the vacant church building and turning it into housing.
ONE Neighborhood Builders originally planned to build 44 low- and moderate-income apartments, but that number has increased thanks to a state law that took effect at the start of this year that lowered the number of parking spaces required for a project of this size.
Plans for the development, known as Steeple and Stone, initially called for 69 parking spaces — about 1.5 for each housing unit. Now, Hawkins said, “we’ll be able to have one-for-one parking. So we’ll be able to use this space more efficiently. Less paving and parking, and more housing.”
Hawkins now expects to be able to fit as many as 54 apartments on the site.
[…]“Any time that we can increase the number of units on a site, we really should be doing it,” Hawkins said. “We should maximize density wherever possible. And one of the greatest barriers to maximizing density are the parking requirements.”
