Parking requirements for museums?

[zman]

I am working on a concept review for an old farm that wishes to become a working agricultural museum.
What parking rate shall I look at requiring? The closest thing we got in our code is a "recreational use" which would mean one parking space per 200 square feet of floor area.

What say all of you?

[Random Traffic Guy]

Depends how busy/popular you/they think it will be. 1/200 is way too much I think, although if that is for a small house and barn with large fields it may be better... One per staff plus some rate for visitors. Give 20 or so visitor spaces, plus a flat pasture for overflow parking. It would also be nice to have some bus-accessible spaces for school trips, and adequate meneuvering space.

[Senior Jefe]

Zman, Those are tough uses to figure parking. The 1 to 200 s.f. is rather much. Our code is 1 to 500 s.f. for this type of use but what does that really mean? These types of uses often have a lot of school field trips during the school year and need school bus drop-off areas. They often have meeting space or outside facilities which may be used for receptions, special events and the like. But the last thing you want to do is to have large paved areas that are only used once or twice a month at most. Kind of ruins the agricultural feeling. Best case would to have minimal parking for staff, volunteers and a few visitors, a bus unloading area, available on-street parking for over-flow and a shared parking agreement with a near-by compatible use like a church or school. Perhaps some area reserved for future parking if things get out of hand. Good luck.

[Tide]

How about instead of going with a "requirement" you bring the museum to the table and find out expected and maximum occupancies. I'm sure they will have schools visit so a few bus siezed parking spaces wouldn't be a bad idea. Forget the arcahic 1:Xhundred ratios especially for something as unique as this. Find out what's expected and figure most people don't go to a museum alone.

Also, if you forsee a problem maybe land banking some spots wouldn't be a bad idea either. Think big but start small.

[cololi]

We have a similar use in our city. We did not apply a parking ration (our ordinance sets minimum requirements for permitted uses, but those requirements are to be used as guidelines for conditional uses. Our working farm "museum" has several hundred parking stalls, but it is also used as a reception center too. A smaller farm museum hear has about 25 parking stalls. The site includes an old restored farm house (roughly 2500 square feet) as a museum, a community garden, animal stables, an old country store, and a 2 acre garden.

[zman]

Well, I am thinking I will have to see what they are proposing. I have only seen the land they wish to annex into the city, but no site plan. As for the sea of parking, I think we would like to see something different as well. Our codes are very archaic so that is the reason I haven't much to work with.

School Bus parking and a couple others would be good. Maybe a gravel surface (it has to be at least "dust-free") to keep with the "country" feel of it.

We'll see, thanks for the help guys.

[ssnyderjr]

I would have to say it depends...
Are there guided tours??
If so, how often are they given? How many people per group?
Will there be tour groups, will bus parking accomodations need to be made?

I have been to both the Corvette Factory/museum and Louisville Slugger Bat Factory/museum which both have high turnover with compacted groups of 20-30, with long tours (30-45 min), but groups were leaving every 15 minutes.
I have also been to Chicago's museum of natural history and museum of science and industry, and at times certain areas were crowed, especially when King Tut's tomb was on display (when I was little).
Will your museum have/allow travelling tours?
I heard that the Rock and Roll hall of fame in Cleveland had huge draws for their John Lennon Exhibit, and included a phone with which you could contact Yoko Ono - a little wierd, but cool.
With all that being said, I would think that museums would attract families (meaning less vehicles overall), but at the same time be able to accomodate more people per sq ft. simply due to the fact that everyone is standing in a museum, as opposed to other building use types.