Gainesville’s Innovation Square, a new live/work/play community bridging the gap between downtown and the University of Florida campus, will re-invent the area into a town square that brings technology, business, and community together. While this project represents a tremendous opportunity to build on the City’s existing walking, biking and transit assets, the potential for building more parking than needed could threaten both the community and financial success of the district.
Nelson\Nygaard assessed the multimodal capacity of the transportation system. We analyzed existing parking facilities, then based on the potential for multimodal travel, created a district-specific parking ratio matrix, and documented the location and timeline for temporary surface parking as part of a phasing plan. We outlined the impact of transportation demand management strategies, and explored the use of existing but underutilized facilities such as nearby downtown parking decks. Our recommendations included a developer-led, incentive-based program for sharing parking designed to make Innovation Square financially attractive to traditional developers.
In the end, our analysis demonstrated that the amount of onsite parking supply could be less than half of what more conventional models would call for. Our analysis will improve profitability, preserve more land for productive development, reduce the carbon footprint, and minimize the need for automobile travel for the square.