this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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See final paragraph - set to be the tallest building in Western Canada. The article focuses on the 14 stories of underground parking that will be included, which does seem excessive given that the SkyTrain is literally across the street.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I would love to see the occasional development that goes hard against parking. Build it over or across the street from Skytrain, provide 10% or more Modo/Evo spaces and zero or near zero residents parking. Then cut the price of everything by $60/120K given you're not having to build the cost of underground parking into the prices.

But even if you could persuade the appropriate council to do away with their parking minimums AND there was some way to discourage car owners from buying (have a neighbouring building with lots of parking? Sign some sort of contract?) I know people's lives change. Just because you work downtown and can take the Skytrain today, doesn't mean you're not going to be working in White Rock or Maple Ridge next year. Or a bunch of people are going to shrug, lie about car ownership, buy the cheaper unit and plan to park on the street somewhere - then complain about how they don't have parking in their building.

Actually, my GENIUS PLAN is for nobody to "own" any parking in a building. Have all the spaces owned by a parking organization that rents them out on a month-by-month basis. That way you reduce the price of every unit by the $60K that each space costs to build and the family buying a 2-bed who don't need parking don't pay for it and the couple buying a 1-bed who need two spots can get it too. Also there's none of the "I drive a monster truck but my unit came with a 'small car' space" or "I'm disabled but my unit's space is miles from the elevator" issues... you just rent out appropriate spaces to each unit depending on their needs.

But obviously the developer is going to want their money up front for the parking they built so whatever organization owns & manages the parking is going to need DEEP pockets and the return on investment is very very slow.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Of all the uses we could allocate surface land toward, can we agree that parking is about the worst? There's no reason for it to see the sun, no reason for it to be seen by people, eyesore that it is.

The Royal Columbian Hospital expansion is 'saving money' by not including adequate parking in its build, and the existing parking around RCH is continually a question: "where can I park", I would regularly read on Reddit. I think we have an example of what 'saving money' looks like.

And we know every penny saved DOES NOT transfer to reduced purchase price, which invariably is set at "whatever the hell we can get people to pay, plus 30%".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Absolutely - I think there's some real estate mantra about how land is the only thing they're not making more of. Using 18 sq m of it for possibly storing one vehicle is a heck of a waste. I saw some stat that there's apparently 8 parking spaces per vehicle in the US - they need one at home, one at work, one at every mall that you might want to visit. So that's 144 sq m of asphalt for storing each car.

True re condo prices... it might work if there was competition and sufficient supply... but we all know that's not the case.

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