Death by Parking

The house that German Sierra bought as the site of his new coffee shop. (Source: Google Maps.)

German Sierra had coffee and community on the mind when he purchased a Dallas home in October 2020. When he picked up the keys, he knew the modest one-story house would require renovation and that like any small business venture, he’d run into hiccups. What he didn’t anticipate, however, was that regulations dating back to 1965 would ultimately thwart his plans to open Graph Coffee in 2022.

In a piece for D Magazine, Sierra detailed his journey from enjoying his first black coffee to deciding it was time to set up his own shop. Establishing a brick-and-mortar location for his passion project of the last half-decade was not a decision he made lightly, but a dream he very much looked forward to materializing. Once a year’s worth of renovations were behind him, he set his sights on opening his doors by September 2022. As of March 2023, Sierra is still not authorized to operate at his current location.

The regulations he’s failing to meet don’t relate to coffee or food service. D Magazine reports that Graph Coffee’s opening has been delayed because Sierra is unable to produce 18 parking spots. Dallas city code mandates at least one parking space for every 100 square feet when it comes to restaurants, regardless of location, clientele, or local support for a parking exemption.

“It’s hard to believe that we managed to do the physical aspect of this whole project within a year’s time, but now we’ve surpassed that one year just dealing with paperwork and red tape,” Sierra said in the D Magazine article.

In fact, Sierra has garnered local support for a parking exemption. He’s collected over 30 letters of support from locals within walking distance, calculated the amount of street parking available for prospective customers, and even conducted multiple traffic studies—as requested by the Board of Adjustments, whom he’s been petitioning—at his personal expense. Nevertheless, he was let down time and time again, D magazine reported.

Tony Jordan of the Parking Reform Network notes that parking mandates like the one jeopardizing Graph Coffee’s opening day rob small businesses of the opportunity to fail or succeed of their own accord. To that point, he believes small business owners disproportionately shoulder the costs and consequences of minimum parking requirements. “It’s not just the space that you have to create to accommodate, in this case 18 cars, which on some lots can be impossible without a variance, but you have to design a business plan that can financially support that amount of parking,” he explained. “It makes it hard to start out as a small business.”

Furthermore, for Jordan it’s not just that parking mandates are antiquated, they’re fundamentally absurd. He points out how Dallas has drawn a distinction between a “dry cleaner” and a “laundry service” through its code, mandating that the former provide 30% more parking than the latter. “These are effectively the same land-use, so it just doesn’t make sense,” he says, adding that a laundry service is already required to provide one spot for every 300 square feet of space. With a single parking spot averaging around 350 square feet, this means that, at minimum, surface parking is required to be larger than the establishment, itself.

The awkward calculus that characterizes Dallas' regulations is evidence enough for Jordan that they serve little utility. A church, for example, must accommodate a parking stall for every 333 square feet if the overall space is under 5,000 square feet. Otherwise, the minimum amount of parking mandated by law is determined by how many parishioners fit in a pew. In the absence of pews, another formula is offered. Calculating parking minimums for schools, shelters, hotels, and banks involves similarly unwieldy ratios. 

Jordan's favorite anomaly, perhaps, is the evident leniency Dallas-based taxidermists have: they're only mandated to provide one parking spot per 600 square feet. That said, he doesn't think that the regulations should be as lenient for coffee shops as they are for taxidermists. The only way forward is to abolish minimums altogether.

“This is a waste of time for everyone involved, the business owners, the developers, and the city staff who should be paying attention to far more important things affecting the residents of their city,” Jordan said. Chad West, a councilmember interviewed for D Magazine’s piece, agreed. “Parking is not just something that has stifled growth and small businesses, but the complication of our code is harmful to small businesses and such a time waste for our staff as well,” he said, adding that the issue of parking is a routine item on his agenda and yet it remains unresolved. 

Meanwhile, German Sierra will continue doing whatever it takes to finally open Graph Coffee. “We’re tired of talking about this,” he told D Magazine. “We want to talk about coffee.” 

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