Misc. Uptown Projects/News

[Windsurfer]

7 minutes ago, caterpillar2 said:

Charlotte should have a zone charge like there is in London. Anyone that driveing within I-277 (I believe that is the highway that goes around uptown) will have to pay a $10 a day charge. That would encourage more people to commute by rail. Oh yea, there is no rail going north. Maybe in a few decades?

With all due respect, we're trying to attract people uptown, no? When my wife and I lived in The TradeMark we were hit with a weird (albeit just a couple of hundred dollars i think) tax for living uptown. As a marketer myself, one thing I've learned is, often it's not the dollar amount, but the message these little taxes send. Restrictions (road diets), small surcharges, taxes, do-this; don't do this, eventually add up into a subliminal message: We don't want your business. I can't tell you how many people, and I know you guys know them too, who declare, "I'll never go uptown".

If anything we should be offering subsidies and more free parking. Get your 'customer base' hooked. Then, if we turn into London, we can start with the fees. Until, they'll just say no-thanks.

[tarwater]

2 hours ago, nakers2 said:

I hate to be the parking Nazi here, since I commute by car myself, but in a decade I think people will look back and realize that Uptown has way to much parking. It's like every development needs their own on site parking. Since the parking will be 100% valet service anyway, why wouldn't they look into renting some space in a neighboring deck, like at the Carillion building or one of those ugly freestanding decks across the street on the back side? People want to complain about traffic, but when you make it easy for people to park right on the site their going to (think underground parking at Epicenter, or the BofA deck for Belk Theater) you create a lot of concentrated traffic in one area. Panther's game days are their own thing, but when the Hornets are playing or there's a big name concert I shouldn't see hundreds of empty spaces in those decks in the third ward. 

A decade from now, we won't need parking in Uptown. Cars will park themselves elsewhere.

[SgtCampsalot]

32 minutes ago, tarwater said:

A decade from now, we won't need parking in Uptown. Cars will park themselves elsewhere.

When pigs fly!!!

By which I mean a decade from now flying pigs will drop people at their destinations...

[elrodvt]

45 minutes ago, SgtCampsalot said:

When pigs fly!!!

By which I mean a decade from now flying pigs will drop people at their destinations...

This could make NC a transportation leader!

[Guest]

56 minutes ago, SgtCampsalot said:

When pigs fly!!!

By which I mean a decade from now flying pigs will drop people at their destinations...

but then pigs will be too valuable and bacon prices will skyrocket :-( 

[kermit]

^ I would rather live in Ballantyne and drive 90 minutes to work everyday than give up bacon.

[Dale]

I don't think I'm a fanboy to assert that Charlotte is rapidly narrowing the gap between itself and the city we'd like to see it become.

[tozmervo]

This is what UP does to you. Taking pictures of parking deck murals while on vacation in San Juan. Reference for future parking deck mural discussions.

[elrodvt]

It just be pretty cheap to vacation there now considering their financial issues?

[AuLukey]

While on the topic of too much/not enough parking (depending on the narrator,) I wonder if there is a study anywhere comparing cities' per capita parking (as in spot vs office worker/resident/visitor.) I'd like to see how we compare to our peers and cities much larger than us. If there is a perfect balance of parking-to-human to shoot for, that would be a good place to start looking at what we have vs what we actually need.

 

I'm always baffled when I overhear someone say "I can never find a place to park Uptown." I wish I just had the nerve to say "Are you blind or just dumb?"

 

[Desert Power]

5 minutes ago, AuLukey said:

I'm always baffled when I overhear someone say "I can never find a place to park Uptown." I wish I just had the nerve to say "Are you blind or just dumb?"

 

or they're looking for a free spot...

[AuLukey]

or they're looking for a free spot...

Harris Teeter... just sayin

[tozmervo]

1 hour ago, elrodvt said:

It just be pretty cheap to vacation there now considering their financial issues?

On the whole its cheap, but food is surprisingly expensive, like NYC expensive. But when a 4 star hotel in a south beach-like setting only costs $160 a night, it's easy to get over the food cost.

[nakers2]

3 hours ago, Desert Power said:

or they're looking for a free spot...

You're not gonna find a free spot during the workday, but I have never had any issues in the evening finding a free parking spot on the street, frankly I'd prefer it, even if I had money to blow. 

[kermit]

10 hours ago, AuLukey said:

I wonder if there is a study anywhere comparing cities' per capita parking (as in spot vs office worker/resident/visitor.) I'd like to see how we compare to our peers and cities much larger than us. If there is a perfect balance of parking-to-human to shoot for, that would be a good place to start looking at what we have vs what we actually need.

Unfortunately there is no systematic datasource that inventories parking. Short of counting spaces yourself useful comparisons between cities are impossible. There have been some efforts to count spaces in neighborhoods and derive some "optimal" figures (see Donald Shoop's book) but variations in land use, density and transit availability / culture make those figures kinda useless as well. The best comparisons I have seen use a remote sensing (satellite image analysis) approach to conduct a surface parking inventory (see link below for examples), unfortunately this technique is unable to inventory structured or underground parking so it is flawed as well.

http://oldurbanist.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/we-are-25-looking-at-street-area.html

Another way to visualize the counting problem is to think about the "flexibility" of parking. Lets say someone counted during a weekday and found a total of 30,000 spaces uptown. Then, on Panthers game day, they counted again and found 50,000 cars 'parked' there -- which number is closer to reality?

 

Edited April 11, 2017 by kermit

[asthasr]

14 hours ago, Windsurfer said:

If anything we should be offering subsidies and more free parking.

God no. That's what has gotten us into this mess to begin with. The issue is that when you subsidize commuting in (which we've done to the tune of billions of dollars in vast highway infrastructure), you are encouraging... commuting in. Not the development of the downtown. That's why the U.S. has so few really modern cities: our cities are either suburbs trying now desperately to claw their way to urbanism (Charlotte, Atlanta, etc.) or they're legacy cities from pre-1930 (New York, Philadelphia, Boston, etc.).

[grodney]

Is Loft & Cellar open yet?  A guy on the sidewalk behind me yesterday was on the phone, identified himself as the owner, and was asking about permits or something for "street parties".....I think behind their building?  Anyway, google lists hours for them, but Nicolas Daniels IG said on March 3 that this (March) might be the month.....and I didn't dig deep enough to get a legit answer.

Also, what the hell with Pie-ology?  Not that I care, just think it's hilarious that some of these places take months/years.

[CLTProductions]

9 minutes ago, grodney said:

Is Loft & Cellar open yet?  A guy on the sidewalk behind me yesterday was on the phone, identified himself as the owner, and was asking about permits or something for "street parties".....I think behind their building?  Anyway, google lists hours for them, but Nicolas Daniels IG said on March 3 that this (March) might be the month.....and I didn't dig deep enough to get a legit answer.

Also, what the hell with Pie-ology?  Not that I care, just think it's hilarious that some of these places take months/years.

Who the hell knows about Pieology, its insane. As far as Loft & Cellar....let me look into it.

[caterpillar2]

15 hours ago, Windsurfer said:

With all due respect, we're trying to attract people uptown, no? When my wife and I lived in The TradeMark we were hit with a weird (albeit just a couple of hundred dollars i think) tax for living uptown. As a marketer myself, one thing I've learned is, often it's not the dollar amount, but the message these little taxes send. Restrictions (road diets), small surcharges, taxes, do-this; don't do this, eventually add up into a subliminal message: We don't want your business. I can't tell you how many people, and I know you guys know them too, who declare, "I'll never go uptown".

If anything we should be offering subsidies and more free parking. Get your 'customer base' hooked. Then, if we turn into London, we can start with the fees. Until, they'll just say no-thanks.

I wasn't serious. London has the charge to discourage driving into center town. Besides, London has the underground and so many ways to commute, cars aren't necessary. It would be decades before we would have to worry about too many cars.

[HopHead]

31 minutes ago, asthasr said:

God no. That's what has gotten us into this mess to begin with. The issue is that when you subsidize commuting in (which we've done to the tune of billions of dollars in vast highway infrastructure), you are encouraging... commuting in. Not the development of the downtown. That's why the U.S. has so few really modern cities: our cities are either suburbs trying now desperately to claw their way to urbanism (Charlotte, Atlanta, etc.) or they're legacy cities from pre-1930 (New York, Philadelphia, Boston, etc.).

Do all the companies that have offices in uptown subsidize both the use of mass transit and parking? It would be great if these companies that may claim to be progressive subsidized use of mass transit only. Or at least favored it more in terms of how much they cover.

[tozmervo]

Just now, HopHead said:

Do all the companies that have offices in uptown subsidize both the use of mass transit and parking? It would be great if these companies that may claim to be progressive subsidized use of mass transit only. Or at least favored it more in terms of how much they cover.

A lot of major companies, as a benefit, offer to reimburse transit and parking up to a defined IRS pre-tax allowance. It used to be that the transit reimbursement was much, much lower than the parking reimbursement, but I see that as of 2016 it's the same.

[kermit]

There is some discussion between the urbanist nerds that workers should be allowed to cash out their parking benefits. The thought was to discourage driving due to the 'I have already paid for parking' reflex.

Edited April 11, 2017 by kermit

[tozmervo]

6 hours ago, kermit said:

Unfortunately there is no systematic datasource that inventories parking. Short of counting spaces yourself useful comparisons between cities are impossible. There have been some efforts to count spaces in neighborhoods and derive some "optimal" figures (see Donald Shoop's book) but variations in land use, density and transit availability / culture make those figures kinda useless as well. The best comparisons I have seen use a remote sensing (satellite image analysis) approach to conduct a surface parking inventory (see link below for examples), unfortunately this technique is unable to inventory structured or underground parking so it is flawed as well.

http://oldurbanist.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/we-are-25-looking-at-street-area.html

Another way to visualize the counting problem is to think about the "flexibility" of parking. Lets say someone counted during a weekday and found a total of 30,000 spaces uptown. Then, on Panthers game day, they counted again and found 50,000 cars 'parked' there -- which number is closer to reality?

 

FWIW https://drive.google.com/open?id=16-A35NpVihduT_s2Kqb_u3VmG-Y&usp=sharing
To your point, it's difficult to capture a lot of parking in terms of "hidden" decks

[SgtCampsalot]

When I used to work at Founders Hall I got a free parking FOB for the BoA parking deck. Same thing when I worked in Mint Museum/Duke complex. For those low income employees it helps a ton, though I would have liked the option to cash-out my pass.

 

Edited April 11, 2017 by SgtCampsalot

[caterpillar2]

13 hours ago, AuLukey said:

 

Harris Teeter... just sayin

 

I didn't think I could possibly be the only one. If really bad, there is always the Harris Teeter on S.Blvd not too far from rail service.