Thursday, February 03, 2005
Garage may rise at Round
What happened to the walkable community?
Why aren't shoppers and residents coming and going using transit?
Taxpayers have spent millions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks for this Smart Growth project. We were told it is a model to get people out of their cars.
Now the developer wants the tallest buildings to be a parking garages
The developer of the Round at Beaverton Central is proposing a seven-story garage with 360 parking stalls. The 75-foot building would be the tallest structure in Beaverton, said Linda Adlard, the city's chief of staff. LDP is planning a second garage for the north side of the development. It will have about 400 spaces. The garage will not be used as a park-and-ride lot for the MAX light rail, Kleiderman said.
What happened to the walkable community?
Why aren't shoppers and residents coming and going using transit?
Taxpayers have spent millions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks for this Smart Growth project. We were told it is a model to get people out of their cars.
Now the developer wants the tallest buildings to be a parking garages
The developer of the Round at Beaverton Central is proposing a seven-story garage with 360 parking stalls. The 75-foot building would be the tallest structure in Beaverton, said Linda Adlard, the city's chief of staff. LDP is planning a second garage for the north side of the development. It will have about 400 spaces. The garage will not be used as a park-and-ride lot for the MAX light rail, Kleiderman said.
Comments:
I think this illustrates perfectly the limits of trying to create enjoyable, walkable areas while limiting auto usage by jurisdictional fiat.
Except for a very few businesses (drive-through fast food restaurants), we enter and leave everywhere on foot. Pedestrian districts are fine. But most Americans would rather not live at the high densities required to support a "pedestrian district" without auto usage.
Talk to someone in one of Seattle or Portland's most flavored districts - Capitol Hill, West Seattle Junction, Hawthorne, Belmont, 23rd. Chances are, they have a car parallel-parked a few blocks away. Clearly, cars play an important role in the maintence of a pedestrian-friendly district.
Why, though, have we not built any *new* "pedestrian districts" since the auto age? Quite simple: GOVERNMENT REGULATION.Specifically, minimum parking requirements.
The common denominator among all pedestrian districts - whether they be as high-rise as Downtown Seattle or as low-rise as Northwest 23rd - is that most parking is not provided by the businesses, on-site. Parking is on-street (public), or in garages and lots (private), but it is rarely on the same lot as the district's businesses.
This configuration allows businesses to locate near the sidewalk (a natural market tendency when people are walking), have display windows to attract customers (another free market tendency), and create the whole "vitality" thing that Portland planners try to inflict with Communitarian land-use law.
The reason we don't see it, then, is that this configuration is outlawed when we mandate (by law) businesses to provide a certain number of parking spaces on-site. If a business must provide parking, the easiest (and thus natural free market) means is to put the parking out front, with the business behind. Boom, you have auto-dependent suburbia - you can still park, but walking is now all but prohibited.
The easy solution is, unsurprisingly, deregulation. Instituting anti-auto policies isn't going to work. Building expensive transit lines is iffy at best. But remove the regulations that require large parking lots, and you're most of the way there. Design all new suburban arterials with parallel parking, and you're 95% of the way there.
The biggest impediment to creating pleasant urban and suburban environments is government regulation of the free marketplace.
Are we surprised?
---Portlander
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Except for a very few businesses (drive-through fast food restaurants), we enter and leave everywhere on foot. Pedestrian districts are fine. But most Americans would rather not live at the high densities required to support a "pedestrian district" without auto usage.
Talk to someone in one of Seattle or Portland's most flavored districts - Capitol Hill, West Seattle Junction, Hawthorne, Belmont, 23rd. Chances are, they have a car parallel-parked a few blocks away. Clearly, cars play an important role in the maintence of a pedestrian-friendly district.
Why, though, have we not built any *new* "pedestrian districts" since the auto age? Quite simple: GOVERNMENT REGULATION.Specifically, minimum parking requirements.
The common denominator among all pedestrian districts - whether they be as high-rise as Downtown Seattle or as low-rise as Northwest 23rd - is that most parking is not provided by the businesses, on-site. Parking is on-street (public), or in garages and lots (private), but it is rarely on the same lot as the district's businesses.
This configuration allows businesses to locate near the sidewalk (a natural market tendency when people are walking), have display windows to attract customers (another free market tendency), and create the whole "vitality" thing that Portland planners try to inflict with Communitarian land-use law.
The reason we don't see it, then, is that this configuration is outlawed when we mandate (by law) businesses to provide a certain number of parking spaces on-site. If a business must provide parking, the easiest (and thus natural free market) means is to put the parking out front, with the business behind. Boom, you have auto-dependent suburbia - you can still park, but walking is now all but prohibited.
The easy solution is, unsurprisingly, deregulation. Instituting anti-auto policies isn't going to work. Building expensive transit lines is iffy at best. But remove the regulations that require large parking lots, and you're most of the way there. Design all new suburban arterials with parallel parking, and you're 95% of the way there.
The biggest impediment to creating pleasant urban and suburban environments is government regulation of the free marketplace.
Are we surprised?
---Portlander
