If you haven’t already heard, I posted the press release on Columbus Underground yesterday… City Set to Build Two Downtown Parking Garages. The mayor originally announced this project last summer, but without much detail or a timeline.
Well. Now we have details.
Let me start off by saying that I think that building these two new garages is a very important and pro-active step in facing what is a slow-growing problem with Downtown Columbus. Quite a few new developments downtown have been wiping out surface lots and will continue to do so over the next few years. The new Neighborhood Launch project alone is erasing a huge chunk of downtown parking. And with the new Courthouse and RiverSouth apartments knocking out more, we’re going to start to feel a parking cramp in the not too distant future if nothing happens to replace it.
I’m a fan of replacing surface lots with denser development. Get rid of the lots. Add places to live and parking decks to store the autos.
The problem with these garage sketches… is that they only serve one purpose: to park in. If we’re trying to make downtown a place to “live, work, and play” then why are we building facilities that offer none of those options? These new structures will make downtown “a place to park” and “a place to walk a block to get past the parking garage”.
At the very least, these new structures could accommodate ground-floor retail space for boutique shops, services, offices, and restaurants. Give people a reason to be there other than just park. Otherwise, what we’re going to be left with is one dead block for housing cars and not much else.
If you want some examples of concealed mixed-use parking, click here, here, or here. Let’s not sell ourselves short on this. Downtown could use a shot in the arm in terms of vibrancy right now.
Here’s how WOSU reported the story.
I could not agree with you more about the need for parking garages to be naturally disguised and made more functional by retail on the bottom floor of the space. While the parking “problem” downtown may be alleviated by the additional parking spaces the walkability and street presence is further jeopardized. I know when I am walking along a commercial stretch I like to look into the store windows, I can’t say anyone walks by a parking garage eager to look into the openings to see what the receptionist Mary Alice is driving these days.
Completely agree with you Walker, and also cmhindependent.
Yea, WOSU’s report was pretty one-sided. More parking garages = more businesses was taken as gospel, when there are other factors at work as well.
Anyways, many of us think this stinks, how do we fight it? Or put another way, how do we work with the mayor and his people to get them to change this, before building starts? Once building starts, it’s pretty much a lost cause. If building starts in February, we don’t have much time.
Does the Mayor read this? Department of Development? Downtown Commision? Retail should be in the garages. What are these guys thinking?
You already I know agree with you Walker, though what I said on my site was pretty harsh. Of course, I see that as being justified since they should know better.
city planners and urban developers never see the obvious. great post!