Parking Madness 2019: Masterlist of Parking Craters
Atlanta/Candler Parking MARTA Station
Carl Holt
Atlanta’s transit system built a lot of Park and Ride stations in its historic, streetcar suburbs. Edgewood/Candler Park was part of the first stations to open in 1979, it is located 3 miles outside of Downtown Atlanta. MARTA’s Edgewood/Candler Park was the first TOD built on existing surface park and ride lot. It meets MARTA’s goal of affordable units, has a small buried parking garage. Phase 2 includes a public greenspace and commercial space.
Kansas City Power and Light District
Kevin Carlyle
The old screenshot is from 1979. For this example I will focus on one small area of it.
The street centered inside the two yellow line is where the KC Streetcar runs (Main St). That’s to the left of the green building in the Google image
https://www.sprintcenter.com/news/detail/sprint-center-earns-eighth-spot-among-us-arenas
https://www.sprintcenter.com/news/detail/sprint_center_recognized_as_americas_third_busiest_arena
https://www.sprintcenter.com/news/detail/sprint-center-named-americas-seventh-busiest-arena
This arena is the 39th largest in the US and there’s no sports team. The numbers are driven by events.
http://kcstreetcar.org/ridership/
If we look at systems per mile that’s 2610 riders per mile every day of the year on average.
The 100+ mile Chicago El gets 6352 riders per mile per day. So our time 2 mile system is hitting way above it’s size. A system 50x larger only gets 2.4x as many riders per mile. This means it’s running dramatically emptier on the average.
Also submission for same area from Cody Johnson who says
My submission for the “Most Improved Parking Crater” is the redevelopment of the riverfront in Cincinnati, OH. Attached is a postcard from the 1980s and is as abysmal as it can get. concrete and asphalt dominate the city. In the updated photo, not only has the old Riverfront Stadium been torn down, but the area that was used primarily for parking has slowly been covered over and developed. “The Banks” which the project has been named, has added 592 multi-family units, 96,000 sf of retail, and has constructed a 333,000 sf built-to-suit for GE’s U.S. Global Operations Center. Defiantly a mixed-use project the city can be proud of.
Downtown Houston
Christof Spieler
One of the most famous photos pf Houston is the Alex Maclean aerial photo of parking lots in Downtown Houston in the early 1980s. That exact spot is now Discovery Green, a thriving urban park, and the surrounding convention and hotel district.
(Apple Maps isn’t quite cup to date — one of the lots at right is now a new performing arts high school)
Oakland/Macarthur BART station
Adriana Valencia
Still in-progress. But impressive transformation nevertheless!
as you can see here it’s under construction.
Chicago Wolf Point
Carl Beien
Albuquerque
William Simon
I thought I’d submit an example of a rehabilitated parking crater in Albuquerque, NM for the Streetsblog challenge. This parcel (205 Silver Ave. SW 87102) is only two blocks south of Central Ave., our main street, in downtown Albuquerque. Like many US cities, urban renewal devastated our built legacy, replacing fine grained urbanism with parking lots and a couple ugly office buildings.
The City of Albuquerque collaborated with an affordable housing nonprofit and private developers to complete this project. Most of the 74 apartments are income restricted and the ground floor is open for commercial tenants, with a grocery store currently occupying the largest ground floor space.
Downtown ABQ is still struggling and a taproom that was occupying one of the commercial spaces already closed down. It seems like rent may be unrealistically high for the ground floor, but the grocery store and the pharmacy seem to be doing ok. No project is perfect, but I still feel this is a huge improvement on an empty parking lot!
Portland Pioneer Courtyard Square
Jay Shuffield
There’s probably nothing that challenges Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square emerging from the site of a full-block parking deck to become the city’s central civic space.
Boston Seaport
Ted Pyne
This is the Boston seaport district. Both images are from MassGIS, one from 2005, one from 2018. Notably, the 2018 image is already out of date- four of the parking lots in the July 2018 image are now under construction buildings.
Tampa Riverwalk
Justin Willits
Here is our former surface parking lot. Now a garage with residential surrounding. Small wins. Wrapped by I-275 ramps this was the biggest eyesore approaching downtown.
New York City’s Hudson Yards
Uchenna Kema
Disclosure, I worked on Hudson Yards as one of the many subcontractors to complete this project.
It’s gotta be Downtown East, Minneapolis. Not too long ago, this was a moonscape of parking lots and one or two bars and a souvenir shop serving the moon kingdom itself, the Metrodome.
Now, it’s got a new stadium, new park, a new light rail connection through its existing station, new office buildings, new hotels, a Trader Joe’s, and a lot more residential, with even more on the way.\
This image is taken from a recent city planning commission presentation (you can see the future site of over 300 new units of housing is labeled) shows the change. But even then, the satellite is not accurate, the red squares (drawn by Grant Simmons: https://twitter.com/grantsimons2/status/1103747233802014720?s=21) show the locations of development built, in construction, or approved between when Google took the satellite image and today.
The Dome closed in 2013. In less than a decade from that point, this former parking crater will have been completely remade.
Austin
My name is James Rambin and I’m the editor of Austin Towers,a development news site covering urban issues in downtown Austin and beyond. I wanted to humbly submit a 15-story office and retail project that just broke ground in Austin, just south of downtown — like, a stone’s throw away — that was previously occupied by a Hooters and a MASSIVE parking lot. Like, six times as big as the restaurant itself.
Here’s an article about the new building, featuring photos of the site and pointing out how massive the lot was compared to the Hooters itself, among other things:
>https://austin.towers.net/at-riversouth-austins-south-central-waterfront-plan-takes-one-small-step/
And here’s an article from today about demolition kicking off at the Hooters:
https://austin.towers.net/video-austins-hooters-hoots-no-more/
D.C.’s NoMo Neighborhood
Ben Ross
DC’s NoMa area in 1999 & 2018 (transformation not yet complete)
Indianapolis
Austin Gibble
I hope you’re doing well! I have a “most improved” parking crater submission for you from Indianapolis! I have aerial imagery and streetview imagery from the area in question in 2014 and 2018. The additions include a transit center, a 28-story residential tower with a grocery store, apartments attached to the side of what was a single-use parking garage, and other mixed-use developments.
D.C.
Maren Hill:
Pike & Rose is a new mixed use neighborhood on Rockville Pike in Montgomery County, MD, a suburb of Washington, D.C.The area was formerly a strip mall but has been redeveloped with pedestrian scale streets, public parks and artwork, and squares with street furniture and events. The area now includes condos and apartments, bars, restaurants, and retail (both chain and local), and offices, The building architecture is all unique so it doesn’t look like some creepy model city project, it looks like an attractive walkable neighborhood. Pike & Rose is on Metro, and has nearby existing and planned bike infrastructure.
Kevin Aherne
Description:
Years ago, much of the usable space between the Rhode Island State House and the train station in downtown Providence, Rhode Island, was, simply put — a parking crater. Earlier development had given preference to vehicle-based needs and several tracts of the historic Woonasquatucket River had been buried below blankets of asphalt. Further, the city’s downtown, which should have been just steps away from the State House, had become virtually unreachable by foot, with a maze of parking lots, freight yards, and rail lines segregating what is now known as Capital Center from the heart of Downtown.
In the late 1970s, a new vision was developed for this land, bringing together initiatives to relocate (below ground) a portion of the railroad tracks, create new streetscapes and public green space, uncover and re-channel the river and develop the tracts of land which had been parking lots into commercial, residential and retail space. Over the next several decades, this former parking crater became home to new rail station, millions of square feet of new residential and commercial office buildings and public open space. Decades after the river was uncovered and new streets were established to reconnect Capital Center to the rest of Downtown, the City continues to work with developers to fill in the remaining urban fabric in Capital Center. As of early 2019, two key projects are under construction on formerly vacant lots in this area including an 8-story, 120-room extended stay hotel and a 169-unit apartment building.
A significant part of this transformation was the creation of the award-winning Waterplace Park, which reclaimed the waterfront for pedestrian and recreational use. Now, nearly a mile of the river is lined with cobblestone walkways, plazas, pedestrian bridges and other features, and is home to one of the region’s most prolific public cultural events — Waterfire.
Schenley Plaza, Pittsburgh
Laura Ellis
I am writing to nominate Schenley Plaza in Pittsburgh for your Most Improved Parking Crater and have included two photos (if used, please credit photographers named in file names – Scott Roller, Schenley Plaza overhead, and John Altdorfer, Schenley Plaza story time.)
The five-acre Plaza is located on what was a large, 280- space parking lot in Oakland and situated between the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, Phipps Conservatory, and the Carnegie Museums and Library. The Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, in partnership with the City of Pittsburgh, transformed the space, and today this much-loved community greenspace attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year, providing gathering places, entertainment, and a grand entrance to Schenley Park. Schenley Plaza features include:
- A one-acre lawn, ever-changing ornamental gardens, and landscaping featuring plants native to western Pennsylvania
- Dining kiosks offering breakfast, lunch, and dinner
- Free fitness, family, and entertainment programs
- The PNC Carousel
- Unlimited, free wifi
- Clean, wheelchair-accessible restrooms
- A tented area, chairs, and café tables
- 24-hour security
- A full-service restaurant, The Porch at Schenley
You can read more and see historic photos here: https://www.pittsburghparks.org/blog/2010/06/24/schenley-plaza-history/ It is a beautifulspace!
Toronto
Dave Thom
Shoot, missed the deadline but please consider downtown Toronto. The infill is unbelievable.
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