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Zoning Ordinance Amendment No. 2011-02 Variance No. 2011-03 March 28, 2011 Page 4 Variance Variance requests are governed by Section 41-638 of the SAMC. Variance requests may be granted when it can be shown that the following can be established: • That there exists a special circumstance related to the property, such as size, shape, topography, location or surroundings. • That the granting of the variance is necessary for the preservation and enjoyment of substantial property rights. • That the granting of the variance will not be detrimental to the public or surrounding property • That the granting of the variance will not adversely affect the General Plan. If these findings can be made, then it is appropriate to grant the variance. Conversely, the inability to make these findings would result in a denial. Using this information, staff has prepared the following analysis, which forms the basis for the recommendation contained in this report. The applicant is requesting approval of a variance to allow a reduction in required parking. The entire shopping center currently contains 655 parking spaces to serve all five of the buildings. The building proposed as the location of Gold's Gym is parked at a rate of 10 spaces per 1,000 square feet on the first floor pursuant to the City's restaurant parking standard, with the second floor having been parked at the rate of six spaces per 1,000 square feet pursuant to the City's medical office parking standards. Section 41-1375 of the SAMC requires one parking space per 28 square feet of physical activity area (773 stalls for 21,644 square feet of activity area) for the health club. Based on code requirements, a total of 1,340 parking spaces are needed for this site with the Gold's Gym use, while 655 spaces are provided for the entire center. To analyze whether the existing parking on the site could accommodate the gymnasium use, and therefore substantiate the variance request, the applicant hired the traffic engineering firm of Linscott, Law and Greenspan to provide an alternative parking standard for the health club and to prepare a shared parking analysis for the site. The parking study, using procedures developed by the Urban Land Institute for shared parking (ULI), analyzed impacts on large shopping center parking lots that are shared by multiple land uses such as Metroplace. The study also surveyed other municipalities and the actual parking demand for health clubs in an effort to provide a realistic parking demand for Gold's. The parking study was intended to provide an analysis of the demand for parking based on the different activity patterns of the center. In addition, it was intended to review the City's parking requirement for health clubs and propose an alternative standard based on other generation factors and actual health club usage. Based on this analysis, a ratio of 5.5 spaces per 1,000 square feet was established for health clubs. This standard was derived by analyzing the Institute of Traffic Engineers 75A-6