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I am looking at how to determine how much parking is required to support a theatre. Does anyone know of guidlines or ratios I can use to figure this out. I have seen too many theatres with no enough parking and I don't want to be in that situation.

Thanks

I usually just use the code established by the city, when trying to determine parking needs. In the city where I used to live and did all my research, it was one parking space for every 3.5 people for a movie theater. For a live theater, I believe it was one space for every 3 people.

I'm not sure how adequate this is, but it should be very good, considering that would be if every seat in the building were filled, there would be a parking space for every 3.5 people.

Agreed. 3.5 to 1 is adequate for most situations.

Also, I should have mentioned that if you are constructing a parking lot from scratch, you should figure that you can get one parking space for about every 400 square feet you have available.

The reason that number is so large is because you also have to allow for circulation of vehicles. You know, room to drive down the rows and go around to the next row, and room for entrances and exits, and room to turn into spaces, as well as back out of them. It might be possible to squeeze a few more into a specific space, but the figures I have provided are pretty much the norm from everything I have read.

So, if you have an acre (43,560 sq. ft.) for parking, you could probably get around 110 spaces on it. With 110 spaces you could have 385 seats in the theater if code requires one parking space for every 3.5 seats.

So if anyone is considering building a new theater from scratch, they would do well to consider the parking requirements very early in the game.

Also consider that sometimes a city may not require you to provide off-street parking if the theater is in their Central Business District (the old downtown area normally). There is usually a lot of on-street parking in those areas, and there may even be some community parking lots. This may provide another reason to consider refurbishing that old downtown theater that needs some TLC.