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Parking problem downtown - too much of it? Not enough?


GRDadof3

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8 hours ago, Quercus said:

Nice! Good to see the JW ramp fully utilized and a company making a little extra off the demand for parking in that area. It only took 10 years to fill the ramp up.

I don't know if you know this, but when it comes to commercial space, hotel rooms, parking ramps, etc.., you're not really supposed to be full. That's considered bad business. It means you're missing out on potential growth. 

Generally you want to get to 80 or 90% capacity/utilization and then you build more.

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But the JW Marriot is not growing, correct? I assume they maintain x number of parking spaces for hotel guests and employees and the remaining spaces were constructed as a side business.

If Marriot is interested in expanding their parking business they probably started looking at expansion opportunities when their garage hit the 90% utilization rate.

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11 hours ago, Quercus said:

But the JW Marriot is not growing, correct? I assume they maintain x number of parking spaces for hotel guests and employees and the remaining spaces were constructed as a side business.

If Marriot is interested in expanding their parking business they probably started looking at expansion opportunities when their garage hit the 90% utilization rate.

You seem a little bit confused Quercus. Obviously the hotel is busy, which is good. They overbuilt that lot to accommodate office space around the site (taking frontage from the Riverfront building, etc.). Now it's full, which means the demand for office space has met, exceeded goals. What happens when these companies grow, or someone decides to move downtown from the suburbs.

The cost of parking is a bitter pill for some companies in the suburbs to swallow. But if you're one of said companies, decide to absorb the cost anyways, and then can't find any parking for your employees? Moving downtown is DOA. It's a snowball effect of all of the other goals for downtown  Living, retail, etc. I don't know why this is such a hard concept for people to understand .

Maybe they should tell them all to ride bikes? "Hey, good news! We're moving downtown into a great new space, tons of restaurants within walking distance, have a drink after work, etc.  Bad news, you now have to peddle your ass 15 miles to work because there is no parking. You will learn to enjoy it! Except from November to April. Oh, and July and august are going to suck too and rainy days. Also, your kids really didn't want you at their after school events so we just gave you some time back. Enjoy!"

Joe

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I'm not confused, Joe, but I appreciate your concern. I don't think the fact that this particular parking garage has only just reached capacity after ten years spells doom for businesses in close proximity. Business owners know their employee and customer needs and plan well in advance.

If a business comes out and says "Yeah, we want to move downtown. But we want a parking space for every one of our employees within one block of our office," well, I hope the City thinks long and hard about building the parking for them. That's how you create an office park, not a thriving downtown.

Since it's become tradition here to post anecdotal evidence about the downtown parking "problem," here's another personal account: every time I use the Michigan State garage it's about 25% full. Doesn't seem to matter what time of day.

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41 minutes ago, joeDowntown said:

You seem a little bit confused Quercus. Obviously the hotel is busy, which is good. They overbuilt that lot to accommodate office space around the site (taking frontage from the Riverfront building, etc.). Now it's full, which means the demand for office space has met, exceeded goals. What happens when these companies grow, or someone decides to move downtown from the suburbs.

The cost of parking is a bitter pill for some companies in the suburbs to swallow. But if you're one of said companies, decide to absorb the cost anyways, and then can't find any parking for your employees? Moving downtown is DOA. It's a snowball effect of all of the other goals for downtown  Living, retail, etc. I don't know why this is such a hard concept for people to understand .

Maybe they should tell them all to ride bikes? "Hey, good news! We're moving downtown into a great new space, tons of restaurants within walking distance, have a drink after work, etc.  Bad news, you now have to peddle your ass 15 miles to work because there is no parking. You will learn to enjoy it! Except from November to April. Oh, and July and august are going to suck too and rainy days. Also, your kids really didn't want you at their after school events so we just gave you some time back. Enjoy!"

Joe

This is Pulitzer material. :)

I think the city has taken on the new philosophy that they no longer need to provide basic infrastructure for businesses downtown anymore, only to the 2% of people who bicycle commute. Let the free markets take over. Next comes the privatization of the streets, picking up trash, parks, etc.. Forget Jane Jacobs, the future looks bright if you're an Ayn Rand fan. 

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2 hours ago, Quercus said:

Since it's become tradition here to post anecdotal evidence about the downtown parking "problem," here's another personal account: every time I use the Michigan State garage it's about 25% full. Doesn't seem to matter what time of day.

Phew, that's good to know.  I'll park there for my next meeting with our vendor in the Arena district when everything south of Fulton is full.  Hope it's not raining, snowing, sleeting, 10 degrees, or 90 degrees and humid.  Plus, I can be sure to plan ahead for the added unproductive time in my workday I'll have to account for where I'm walking across downtown and back.  

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Let me know the next time "everything south of Fulton" is full.

C'mon Wingbert, you can be more creative than that! Downtown has, what, 20,000+ automobile parking spaces?

 

My point is simply that when one lot or garage fills up there are likely other options available nearby.

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32 minutes ago, Quercus said:

Let me know the next time "everything south of Fulton" is full.

C'mon Wingbert, you can be more creative than that! Downtown has, what, 20,000+ automobile parking spaces?

 

My point is simply that when one lot or garage fills up there are likely other options available nearby.

Quercus- how far south on Fulton? Have you ever attempted getting a monthly parking pass south of Fulton? If not, try it some time. They have no waiting list for the surface lots. You call- every day between 7-8 AM and ask if one has become available. No, nothing? Call you tomorrow! Repeat process for weeks/months. Now multiply that by 30, 60, 90 people trying to move downtown. 

Joe

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On 3/19/2017 at 0:56 PM, Quercus said:

C'mon Wingbert, you can be more creative than that! Downtown has, what, 20,000+ automobile parking spaces?

My point is simply that when one lot or garage fills up there are likely other options available nearby.

Um, no.  There are not.  There are ZERO available monthly parking passes through the city in any government owned ramp.  There are only like 150 public monthly spaces available anywhere, and they are all in those DASH lots on the other side of the river.  http://grcity.us/enterprise-services/Parking-Services/Pages/Monthly-Cards-Available.aspx.  The whole "overnight" parking thing for residential is also basically full.  The JW ramp is a private ramp shared by the Riverfront Building or whatever its called.  Which section is full I don't know.  The only other major privately owned ramp (that serves businesses) AFAIK is the Ellis ramp next to Waters.  I don't know whether that is full or not.  South of Fulton there is zero monthly parking availability, public or private at last check.  A lot of monthly parking is waitlisted out for years at current turnover.  

A big chunk of this is traceable to that ill-advised lease of parking to Spectrum.  How they structured that, I don't know, but it puts the city between a rock and a hard place. Spectrum ties up hundreds of spaces, and if they decide having a cube farm downtown was a stupid idea and leave,  the city is left with a massive and expensive parking ramp it may no longer need.  The parking infrastructure was never designed to accommodate downtown cube farms--you just can't use up hundreds of spaces for the sort of square footage Spectrum is leasing.  Economically, that move was a disaster for the entire downtown office market. If a large space goes vacant right now, you might as well just shut off the lights and let it rot unless you happen to be attached to a ramp you own.

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13 hours ago, x99 said:

 The parking infrastructure was never designed to accommodate downtown cube farms--you just can't use up hundreds of spaces for the sort of square footage Spectrum is leasing.

I don't understand this line of reasoning. Are you saying that density is bad? Should we also not be building any tall buildings, since they'll be serving more people per acre?

I'm not going to argue that 25 Ottawa isn't too dense (as a worker there, I'd certainly prefer more space and less noise), but it's certainly not uncommon (unfortunately), especially for software development and other IT jobs, which tend to attract many of the people most excited about working/living downtown.

I don't know the exact specifics, but I do know that Spectrum did not get a parking space for each and every worker—in addition to the carrot of the "cash out" incentive, there was the stick of limited availability. I don't have any broad data, but anecdotally I do know that two colleagues (on my five-person team) relocated downtown, and many others (including myself) are using alternative means of commuting. Also, I know of some colleagues that park at those virtually-empty DASH lots west of the river.

I remain unconvinced that our current "disaster" is anything more than growing pains; regardless, Spectrum's move did not cause it. It may have accelerated the trend, but it was already well underway.

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2 hours ago, organsnyder said:

I don't understand this line of reasoning. Are you saying that density is bad? Should we also not be building any tall buildings, since they'll be serving more people per acre?

[...]

I remain unconvinced that our current "disaster" is anything more than growing pains; regardless, Spectrum's move did not cause it. It may have accelerated the trend, but it was already well underway.

Spectrum was not the sole cause, but without Spectrum I doubt we would be having this conversation today.  Density is not necessarily bad, but here's an example that illustrates the problem.  Say you have a traditional density of one worker and one parking space per 500 square feet of office space.  Now try to shift that to 100sf per worker.  A 50,000 square foot office building now requires 500 parking spaces instead of 100.  Your infrastructure is short 400 spaces.  At traditional levels, those 400 spaces  would have served another 200,000 square feet of office space.  With no available parking, 200,000 square feet of office space just became almost useless unless you can convince the CEO and every other worker to walk. 

It seems to me that the density Spectrum brought in was far higher than the norm for downtown.  The city and Miller Johnson/Orion then compounded the problem by putting up another building across the street that eliminated a huge chunk of parking, while including inadequate onsite parking. After looking at current vacancies and lease rates in buildings that are not owned by people with unlimited resources, I am quite convinced I am right that the downtown office market is in a very unhealthy and dangerous spot because of this.  And the situation is worse than GRDad's "Ayn Rand" quip.  In that world, someone would build parking or take over the trash service.  In our world, no one will step in to fill the gap so long as the government retains the ability to crush them.  

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Square feet don't need parking spaces—people do. Given the insane growth of downtown over the past decade, I don't see how we ever had any kind of equilibrium.

12 minutes ago, x99 said:

In that world, someone would build parking or take over the trash service.  In our world, no one will step in to fill the gap so long as the government retains the ability to crush them.

With the hype around self-driving cars right now, I'm guessing that the availability of private capital for building parking structures is quite low, worldwide. If I were a lender, I'd certainly be hesitant to fund that sort of project, unless the developer had a plan to recoup the construction costs within just a few years.

Also, it strikes me that our current downtown market makes developing new offices and residences much more lucrative than parking structures. Of course, many projects require a parking component to make the product attractive, but building parking for public, non-tenant use is never going to make financial sense.

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1 hour ago, ctpgr34 said:

It was so frustrating today trying to find a parking spot in the Gov ramp:wacko:

Great.  Now go to the city as a business owner and ask to lease one of those spaces on a monthly basis.  Let me know how it goes after your ears stop ringing from the sound of their laughter.

 

4 hours ago, organsnyder said:

Square feet don't need parking spaces—people do.   Given the insane growth of downtown over the past decade, I don't see how we ever had any kind of equilibrium.  [...]

Right.  And when you stuff in more people per square foot you need more parking to service the same number of rentable square feet.  So far as the "insane growth" I have to ask--what about 50 Monroe sitting empty?  Calder Plaza Building?  Waters (hotel conversion, but a loss of office space)?  I suppose it all depends how you define "growth" and whether the vacant spaces can be filled back up.  Right now, the public parking necessary to fill anything that does not have private parking does not exist.  Once the parking lot is full, the idea that you are going to stuff very many more customers in is a foolish idea.

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10 minutes ago, x99 said:

Great.  Now go to the city as a business owner and ask to lease one of those spaces on a monthly basis.  Let me know how it goes after your ears stop ringing from the sound of their laughter.

I just called, no laughter.  Understood the frustration of having all those spots reserved for public parking and would put me on a waiting list if I would like.  What I figured would be said.

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8 hours ago, organsnyder said:

With the hype around self-driving cars right now, I'm guessing that the availability of private capital for building parking structures is quite low, worldwide. If I were a lender, I'd certainly be hesitant to fund that sort of project, unless the developer had a plan to recoup the construction costs within just a few years.

That's an interesting thought (though I think we're still along way away from everyone riding around in self driving cars). Serious question though, wouldn't your self driving car need a place to park? And how in the heck would it find a spot (or does it go home?). I'm going to have to google that one! :)

3 hours ago, ctpgr34 said:

I just called, no laughter.  Understood the frustration of having all those spots reserved for public parking and would put me on a waiting list if I would like.  What I figured would be said.

Wonder if the public parking ever fills up (other than DeVos place events catered to locals)? I used to work for a place that had an office near the baseball stadium in Denver. On game days, your monthly parking pass was invalid. If you parked in your own lot (or even designated parking spot), you'd get a ridiculously large fine. That seemed like quite an annoyance. Baseball game! Scramble! :)

Joe

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I found an article about parking an autonomous vehicles. Some really interesting concepts:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/10/self_driving_cars_effects_on_cities_depend_on_who_owns_them.html

I like where they say that they may have to offer incentives so your car doesn't drive around empty while you are on a short-term trip. Go to restaurant, let car wander around for an hour and half. :)

Joe

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12 hours ago, joeDowntown said:

That's an interesting thought (though I think we're still along way away from everyone riding around in self driving cars). Serious question though, wouldn't your self driving car need a place to park? And how in the heck would it find a spot (or does it go home?). I'm going to have to google that one! :)

The impact depends on how the ownership model changes. If everyone continues to own their own vehicles, then the vehicles will indeed need places to park—though a vehicle could easily park itself a mile or two away without inconveniencing the passengers, so lot location becomes much less important.

If the ownership model changes, then there will be a much larger impact. Imagine a company like Uber (hopefully one with better ethics, though) that has a fleet of self-driving vehicles. You call one from your phone—like you do with Uber or Lyft today—but it's much cheaper, since there are no human drivers. The cars are constantly in use: after they drop you off, they're immediately on their way to their next fare. So, no parking is needed (other than a large lot outside the city, probably connected with a maintenance facility, to store vehicles during off-peak times). In this model, little parking is needed near human-centered destinations.

I think that the latter model will win out, in time: owning a personal vehicle that sits idle 95% of the time will be an expensive luxury, compared with the much lower cost of on-demand renting. Of course, it will take time for people to get comfortable with this idea, but the cost savings will win out for most people.

Note that all of this does nothing to address congestion concerns (which we don't talk about much in this thread): single-occupancy vehicles are still horribly inefficient. I'm hoping that autonomous vehicles also help people to be more comfortable with alternative transportation (personally, the existence of Uber/Lyft already makes me much more comfortable taking the bus somewhere, since I know I can always get home with a couple of taps on my phone).

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2 hours ago, organsnyder said:

The impact depends on how the ownership model changes. If everyone continues to own their own vehicles, then the vehicles will indeed need places to park—though a vehicle could easily park itself a mile or two away without inconveniencing the passengers, so lot location becomes much less important.

If the ownership model changes, then there will be a much larger impact. Imagine a company like Uber (hopefully one with better ethics, though) that has a fleet of self-driving vehicles. You call one from your phone—like you do with Uber or Lyft today—but it's much cheaper, since there are no human drivers. The cars are constantly in use: after they drop you off, they're immediately on their way to their next fare. So, no parking is needed (other than a large lot outside the city, probably connected with a maintenance facility, to store vehicles during off-peak times). In this model, little parking is needed near human-centered destinations.

I think that the latter model will win out, in time: owning a personal vehicle that sits idle 95% of the time will be an expensive luxury, compared with the much lower cost of on-demand renting. Of course, it will take time for people to get comfortable with this idea, but the cost savings will win out for most people.

Note that all of this does nothing to address congestion concerns (which we don't talk about much in this thread): single-occupancy vehicles are still horribly inefficient. I'm hoping that autonomous vehicles also help people to be more comfortable with alternative transportation (personally, the existence of Uber/Lyft already makes me much more comfortable taking the bus somewhere, since I know I can always get home with a couple of taps on my phone).

C'mon, how many people do you think would actually do this, that work downtown? Or what percentage? 5-10% maybe? 

 

 

19 hours ago, ctpgr34 said:

I just called, no laughter.  Understood the frustration of having all those spots reserved for public parking and would put me on a waiting list if I would like.  What I figured would be said.

Those spots aren't available for monthly passes, in case you didn't know. 

On 3/19/2017 at 10:22 AM, Quercus said:

I'm not confused, Joe, but I appreciate your concern. I don't think the fact that this particular parking garage has only just reached capacity after ten years spells doom for businesses in close proximity. Business owners know their employee and customer needs and plan well in advance.

If a business comes out and says "Yeah, we want to move downtown. But we want a parking space for every one of our employees within one block of our office," well, I hope the City thinks long and hard about building the parking for them. That's how you create an office park, not a thriving downtown.

Since it's become tradition here to post anecdotal evidence about the downtown parking "problem," here's another personal account: every time I use the Michigan State garage it's about 25% full. Doesn't seem to matter what time of day.

"Michigan State garage?" where is that? You mean the garage under MSU?

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5 hours ago, GRDadof3 said:

C'mon, how many people do you think would actually do this, that work downtown? Or what percentage? 5-10% maybe? 

I don't think you understand.  You're starting to become a rabbit-in-the-hat denier.  Welcome to my treehouse, where we trade in hard facts and empirically verifiable assumptions and projections.  It's often a very lonely place. ;)    

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3 hours ago, organsnyder said:

When it costs double (or more) to own a car vs. calling one as needed, patterns will change.

No they won't. That's what everyone said when gas went to $5/gallon. I seem to recall a lot of cars still on the road back then.

2 hours ago, x99 said:

I don't think you understand.  You're starting to become a rabbit-in-the-hat denier.  Welcome to my treehouse, where we trade in hard facts and empirically verifiable assumptions and projections.  It's often a very lonely place. ;)    

I don't know, the more I keep talking about things like this, the more people reach out to me via message, etc.. ;)

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