tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28170135.post115521781968896916..comments2023-10-17T03:36:04.410-07:00Comments on BIA Blog: No Stalling on Downtown ParkingDavid Schroedelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14533965870997862752noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28170135.post-1155678610840936152006-08-15T14:50:00.000-07:002006-08-15T14:50:00.000-07:00Doing it right would be to tear them down and reb...Doing it right would be to tear them down and rebuild the sites. They should be mixed-use buildings or office towers. The buildings should be no shorter than 20 stories. PARKING SHOULD BE UNDERGROUND. If something of that nature is not feasible now, then the city should wait until it is. <BR/>Those blocks are to valuable to just leave as one floor of retail. <BR/><BR/>From looking at maps of the garages it looks like you could fit 2 towers on the South Park and 2-3 towers on the North Park<BR/><BR/>Erik, as someone who is very for downtown and development downtown, I am surprised that you would not look to the future and see that refacing the garages would be a big mistake.<BR/><BR/>Like it was said before, the improvements to the garages would be sealing the deal on the cities mistake.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28170135.post-1155621372439402282006-08-14T22:56:00.000-07:002006-08-14T22:56:00.000-07:00You can have a Bannana Republic as a retail tenant...You can have a Bannana Republic as a retail tenant and that still doesn't fix the fact that there are 2 floors of parking above and thats it. These garages are on Pacific Ave., our main drag. They are in a zoning that allows 400 ft heights. <BR/><BR/><BR/>Ebjornson said... <BR/>I agree. The city's act of tearing down buildings to build parking garages is pretty well accepted now to have hurt the downtown badly.<BR/><BR/>And you want to seal the deal!<BR/><BR/>The city needs to stop the cycle of mistakes Downtown!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28170135.post-1155615884172572802006-08-14T21:24:00.000-07:002006-08-14T21:24:00.000-07:00It is impossible to get a critical density of cust...<I>It is impossible to get a critical density of customers, visitors, and residents at all periods of the day if you are devoting so much of your land area, capital investment, or street-level pedestrian space to off-street parking.</I><BR/><BR/>I agree. The city's act of tearing down buildings to build parking garages is pretty well accepted now to have hurt the downtown badly.<BR/><BR/>However, if there is well designed retail on the first floor, I don't see that it would be all that bad to continue to have parking behind and above. Of course, the retail spaces have to be dramatically modified as they are not working as built.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28170135.post-1155321748806538042006-08-11T11:42:00.000-07:002006-08-11T11:42:00.000-07:00The BIA focus on parking is ultimately going to fa...The BIA focus on parking is ultimately going to fail as an economic development strategy. It is impossible to get a critical density of customers, visitors, and residents at all periods of the day if you are devoting so much of your land area, capital investment, or street-level pedestrian space to off-street parking. (i.e. land area if you have surface-level parking, capital investment if you're choosing underground garages, and street-level pedestrian space or retail if you're building above-ground garages topped off with offices or condos). <BR/><BR/>You'll get commuters during the day taking up spaces, maybe some people around lunchtime, maybe even some people around dinner-time, but there won't be enough casual walking people to support a balance of retail with so much investment into auto infrastructure and the maintenance of parking limits. You just can't get the density that way. Have you people not read Jane Jacob's "The Death and Life of Great American Cities?" It should be required reading for economic development consultants. She was (and still is) one of the most prominent urban theorists that specialized in the functioning of urban economies and their relation to the type of urban form. Her approach was extremely pragmatic. All she did over the course of many years was observe the patterns of areas that were economically vibrant and she wrote them in a book. Essentially what she said was that successful areas have the following attributes: Shorter blocks, good use of corners, density, mixed use, time distribution of users of an area, and a better balance of transportaion modes.<BR/><BR/>You know what I think is sad - what is really sad... it's the corner of S. 11th and Pacific. It's bordered by the derelict (but restorable) Luzon Building, two disgusting elevated parking garages and two planes of surface parking. The area is dead, there is no sense of space, traffic is unruly because of the onramp to 705, and yet what I'm hearing from this report is that the BIA wants "more of this." They want deadness? They want an ugly downtown? This is a horrible use of corners (no pedestrian destinations whatsoever), there is no density of any appreciable nature, it's a monopoly of uses, there is no time distribution of users in the area, and it's auto dominated. It's a recipe for failure.<BR/><BR/>The alternative of course to parking (in Portland, as in other first world cities across the world) has been transit - high quality, high frequency, rail-based transit. Now I can understand why the BIA wants enforcement of present parking regulations. But you all really should understand that minimum parking requirements and off-street parking expansion is not a winning strategy in the long run for the kind of economic development and for the kind of downtown that we are striving for.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com