White Flint Mall Planning Study

The White Flint Mall Redevelopment in Rockville, Maryland was being redeveloped by Lerner Enterprises. Walker was asked to perform a shared parking study in order to identify future parking needs for the mall.

The existing White Flint Mall was redeveloped in phases to include a mix of retail, restaurant, residential, hotel, theater, and office space. Preliminary drawings indicated the redeveloped project would have a planned parking supply of approximately 6,000 spaces. The primary objective was to project the future parking demand and confirm the adequacy of the planned parking layout.  Understanding the parking requirements under the Montgomery County Zoning Ordinance was also important.

Solution:

In order to understand current conditions and project future parking demand at the White Flint Mall, Walker conducted hourly occupancy counts at the current property. After discussing the target tenant and customer base of both the current and future mall, Walker determined that the observed parking generation rates would likely increase after the renovation and expansion of the mall.

Walker developed a shared parking model using the base parking demand ratios, as found in the ULI Shared Parking model and refined through additional research by Walker, to project future parking demand for the redeveloped White Flint Mall.

Our initial analysis indicated that the planned parking supply was inadequate to support parking demand and did not comply with zoning requirements. The building program was revised and the planned parking supply was increased to provide adequate parking to meet both the needs of the development and the requirements of Montgomery County’s Zoning Ordinance.

Benefit:

The Owner of the Mall was able to benefit from the application of shared parking principles by rightsizing the amount of parking needed to serve the development during peak conditions.