I Wish This Parking Was...

It's the day after Thanksgiving, when Strong Towns members near and far leap out of bed at the crack of dawn to--what else?--document their town's excess parking capacity, which is often glaringly visible even on what is normally the busiest retail day of the year. I've been at this since 2015, when I went to the north edge of town to observe scenes like this...

big box store, Collins Road, 11/27/2015

...and this...

big box store, Blairs Ferry Road, 11/27/2015

In these two cases, there were many customers in both stores, and many cars in the parking lots I depicted. The problem is that the lots are so big that there was much excess space anyhow--even on Black Friday!

Five years later, I had been looking forward to re-visiting the places I'd documented that first year. However, the coronavirus pandemic has forced many plans to change, and Black Friday Parking is no exception. It would be no surprise to find excess parking capacity today, even in the busiest shopping areas. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel, and no doubt even less interesting.

Happily, the good people at Strong Towns came up with an alternate plan: Show us a place where there’s too much parking, but more importantly, tell us (or even illustrate for us, if you’re artistically inclined!) exactly what we’re missing out on by not taking a more flexible, adaptable approach to that space (Herriges 2020). You can see results from around the world by searching for the hashtag #iwishthisparkingwas on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

So I did not return to Collins and Blairs Ferry Roads this year. It may actually be the oceans of unused surface parking I documented in 2015 are the highest, best use of that land, although it probably doesn't deserve the rich dollop of public infrastructure that helped build the Target and all those strip malls. (One could, alternatively, make the argument that foregoing sprawl would leave more natural areas and/or farmland.) 

This year I went to the core of the city, where sadly we also have oceans of surface parking that goes unused no matter what day it is. I took this picture in Czech Village, surely my favorite sector of the city.

Czech Village has preserved a gorgeous shopping district on 16th Avenue, which was the center of what used to be a vibrant working class neighborhood. Much of that housing disappeared after the flood of 2008, but the district remains, enhanced by some great live-work spaces. Those residences aside, it is essentially "drive-to urbanism," and both 15th and 17th Avenues are lined with surface parking lots to accommodate visitors. Developing 15th Avenue would make a nice connection between the district and the National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library, but I chose to pick on 17th Avenue instead, because it could connect to remaining residential neighborhoods across C Street. It was difficult to develop much here with confidence, so near to the river before there was adequate flood protection, but that is now largely in place, so that obstacle has been removed.

I wish this parking were a series of four-plex apartments, the missing middle housing that Cedar Rapids so desperately needs, and probably better long-term investments than the $300,000 condos that have sprouted in the adjoining neighborhoods of Kingston Village and New Bohemia.

As development continues near the river, the land value in Czech Village and the other neighborhoods may increase to the point that surface parking lots become irresistible targets for improvement. This is less likely to be the case in the MedQuarter, where the biggest stakeholders are the health care giants not private landowners. Just east of downtown are some parking craters of staggering size. Here's one, in the 500 block of 7th Street SE.

I don't know that my phone camera can capture its enormity. I tried again, with video.

Even on a weekday, this parking is excessive. I wish this parking were any sort of block that could support a 24-hour downtown. There's room for quite a bit of housing, and maybe a corner store-- groceries and hardware historically abounded in this neighborhood, but that was long ago--and even a pocket park. It is a scandal that this much land in such a valuable part of the city is going unused.

SEE ALSO

"Black Friday Parking 2019," 29 November 2019

"Black Friday Parking," 27 November 2015 [in which I again used the expression "shooting fish in a barrel"]