New York City's City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, enacted in December 2024, eliminated parking mandates in most of Manhattan below 96th Street, Long Island City, and parts of western Queens and Brooklyn. But according to Christopher Tiessen, President and CEO of KLAUS Multiparking America, the U.S. subsidiary of a German manufacturer of mechanical and automated parking systems, the change has had a limited effect on how developers approach parking outside that defined zone.
"The mandate removal was significant where it applied, but it applied to a defined footprint," Tiessen said. "Step outside it, or look at a project where the lender or the tenant mix still expects parking, and the site-planning problem is exactly what it was before December 2024."
For projects in the outer boroughs, mixed-use buildings with ground-floor commercial space, and luxury multifamily developments, the real constraint is not the zoning code but whether a conventional parking structure can physically fit on a given site. "On a narrow lot, or a site where the developer can't give up ground-floor retail to a ramp, a conventional garage often isn't feasible regardless of what zoning requires," Tiessen said. "That's been true in this city for years; City of Yes just made more people look at it directly."
An installation by MasterVario F2 fully automatic system on Manhattan's Upper East Side illustrates that site geometry, not zoning status, drives parking decisions. The system delivers custom parking for 23 cars through a ground-level transfer cabin and three levels above grade, even within the mandate-free zone.
Other cities that eliminated parking minimums earlier offer a preview of what New York might experience. San Francisco, Seattle, and Minneapolis saw aggregate parking provision fall in transit-rich corridors, but it held steady in outer-ring submarkets where residents and lenders continued to require it. "Expect the same pattern here," Tiessen said. "The transit-adjacent parts of the mandate-free zone will shed parking. Everywhere else in the city, developers will keep providing it—the only question is whether they're building it efficiently."
Tiessen noted that the developers furthest ahead are resolving parking questions during design development, before a structural engineer locks in a floor plate. That window closes well before a project reaches the zoning table, regardless of where in the city it is located.
