Apparently not satisfied with the city’s approval of a 10-year, 85 percent tax rebate, the developer of a $75 million apartment complex near Kansas University’s Memorial Stadium now is asking the city for an additional favor: a reduction in the parking requirement for the project.

Early on, HERE, LLC, touted the innovative automated parking system it planned to install in the complex. Now, the developer is asking city commissioners for special permission to provide 100 fewer parking spaces than the city’s code requires for a project of that size. Plans call for the project to include 237 upscale apartments along with 13,000 square feet of retail space. City code requires one parking space for each bedroom in the apartment building. That would be 684 spaces, but HERE wants to reduce that by 100 spaces to a total of 584.

In a letter to the city, the developer says Lawrence’s parking standards are higher than in other communities and notes that KU data indicates about 60 percent of students living on campus need parking.

Neither of those comparisons is particularly relevant to this situation, and commissioners shouldn’t consider a parking reduction for this project.

The tax rebate for this project already sets a troublesome precedent for the city, which may be asked for similar incentives from any number of other apartment developers in Lawrence. Under no circumstances should the city consider concessions that could aggravate the already troublesome parking situation in this area.

One space per bedroom seems like the bare minimum of parking that should be required — especially in an apartment development that expects to rent one-bedroom apartments for $1,200 per month and four-bedroom units for $2,800 per month. How many renters who can afford those apartments wouldn’t have a car they want to park?

If city officials decide they want to consider any substantial changes in parking or any other requirements for this project, they should restart the approval process for both the project and the tax incentives to support it. The request for reduced parking raises some red flags that might make the three commissioners who voted in favor of the 10-year tax rebate rethink their position.