It's impossible to take a "market-oriented" approach to parking when street parking exists. Either you remove the street parking, you regulate the space somehow, or you have a tragedy of the commons that pisses everyone off. In context, it sounds like the developer was obviously planning to take advantage of existing street parking to reduce the number of spaces built; it was, as described, the densest development in the area, at a below-normal spaces-per-unit for such an area.