Lehi City News
City council votes to change preschool parking code
Nichole Coombs | Lehi Free Press
The Lehi City Council voted unanimously in their Sept. 8 meeting to add a new parking code for preschools that provide integrated therapeutic services.
The changes come after residents in the Foxhunt neighborhood, located at the southeast corner of 3200 North and 1200 West in Lehi, complained that neighborhood streets were being used as overflow parking by employees of a special-needs preschool.
Kyrk Wright, who lives in the neighborhood, told the city council in June that he was happy to see new businesses but worried that bumper-to-bumper parking on his street posed a hazard.
“I’ve lived here for 16 years,” said Wright. “Most of the houses in the area have young kids or teenagers. The special needs preschool has a large number of employees. Those employees don’t have anywhere to park, so they fill our streets. Between 30-40 cars per day.”
According to city code, preschools are required to have one parking stall per 300 feet of gross floor area. Fabian House, the preschool near the Foxhunt neighborhood, meets this requirement, but it’s the type of preschool that is causing the parking issues.
Fabian House offers programs for neurotypical children and children on the spectrum from kindergarten through 5th grade, including applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapy for children with autism. Fabian House employs one caregiver for every three to four children, and this influx of staff is what’s causing the parking issues.
In order to make sure this situation doesn’t happen again, the Lehi City Council passed a code that specifies preschools with integrated therapeutic services must now provide one parking stall per employee on the largest shift of the day, plus five visitor spaces, or as otherwise approved by the planning commission, based on a parking demand study.
The new code impacts any new businesses in Lehi but does not impact those already located in the city.
