We value Old Town so much that we actually protect it with a historic district designation so that it won’t be lost.

If we valued the way this part of the city was built so much, you’d think we would want people to build more neighborhoods like it. And maybe we do. But our laws make that impossible.

Like most cities in America, Pocatello’s city code sets minimum parking requirements for all types of new development, and the reality is that these parking minimums forbid anyone from ever building a neighborhood that looks remotely like Old Town anywhere in Pocatello.

Take a look at the numbers. Office and retail uses require 1 parking space for every 250 square feet (SF) of floor area. When you include the driving lanes, landscaping, etc., each parking space requires at least 300 SF of parking lot (with a very efficient layout). That means, according to the code, your parking lot is required to be larger than your building. For restaurants, bars, and medical offices, a parking space is required for every 200 SF of floor area, meaning the parking lot must be at least 150% the size of the building. Similarly, apartments require 2 spaces per unit, and considering that a lot of the older apartments are less than 600 SF, they would require more parking lot than building space as well.

This is all assuming single-story buildings. If you want to build two stories, of course, the parking lot has to double, and so on for each additional story beyond that. It should be clear from these ratios that we could never allow a full block of side-by-side single story storefront shops along a sidewalk. The block would have to be at least half parking lots, probably more. A block of two story buildings is even farther from the realm of possibility.

Let’s assume some well-intentioned developer wants to create a pleasant, walkable neighborhood of shops and offices for the benefit of Pocatello residents in some other part of the city. Let’s say just one street. Here is one block of Main Street.