The Brown & White

The Bethlehem zoning board approved the Sands Bethworks zoning request this week for shorter parking spaces in the parking garage of the casino that is being built.

The purpose of shortening the spaces is to maximize the number of spaces without adding to the surface area of asphalt, allowing for a greener area outside the garage, said Bethlehem zoning official John Lezoche. The garage can now hold about 200 more cars.

"The purpose that the garage will be serving really dictates how large the spaces must be," Lezoche said.

The request of The Sands Bethworks Gaming LLC, which is a subsidiary of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, was to shorten the length by a foot, so that each space would be 9 feet wide by 18 feet long. A parking space is normally required to be 9 by 19 feet.

Zoning laws dictate that parking projects are allowed 30 percent of compact spacing normally, Lezoche said. A compact space is technically 8 feet wide by 16 feet long.

Based on the projected area of the garage, there would be room for 3,200 spaces that meet the zoning laws.

By orienting the spaces at a 70 degree angle and shortening them by one foot, the number of spaces could be increased by about 6 percent, allowing for about 200 more spaces, said Lezoche.

"You can imagine what the acreage would be of 200 square feet of asphalt," Lezoche said.

Increasing parking without increasing environmental impact is not the only environmentally-conscious measure that Sands Bethworks has taken.

A good portion of the steel used will come from Nucor, the company where the steel from the Bethlehem steel site was shipped for recycling, according to the Sands Bethworks Web site.