Black Friday Parking 2023: Mount Vernon Road

2317: One of many smokeshops on the road, used to be a bookstore

I've gone a bit off-script for this year's celebration of #BlackFridayParking. Strong Towns has promoted this event since the mid-10s as a way of highlighting the high costs to cities of zoning regulations that mandate large commercial parking lots (Abramson 2023). Past Black Fridays have taken me to the parking lots of big-box stores on our city's outer edge, and to the vast parking lots all too close to our city center.

Amidst all the giddiness and photography, I've come to the conclusion that, in Cedar Rapids anyway, the problem is not the zoning code. Our giant Wal-Marts and Targets have parking lots even bigger than the code requires, because land is cheap here, customers expect it, and the city is designed in such a way that 90+ of people are going to drive to shop anyway. 

In 2017 I walked 16th Avenue SW, a mid-century commercial corridor that is now a model for discarded sprawl. 

Still empty in '23: former K-Mart parking lot, 16th Av SW, November 2017

The problem on 16th is not that even large Black Friday crowds couldn't fill the gigantic parking lots, but that there are no crowds at all. (That year I was accompanied by "the other Dr. Nesmith." I don't know whether the excitement was too much for her, but she hasn't been tempted by #BlackFridayParking since.)

This year I followed a similar impulse to Mt. Vernon Road SE. This historic corridor is getting some love from the city in the form on an action plan. Alas, its internal contradictions mean some of its goals are going to have to give way, probably to faster vehicle traffic.

The Mount Vernon Road action plan covers 10th to 44th Streets.

4035: At the east end of the plan area, acres of parking at the Mt. Vernon Road Hy-Vee

 The executive summary describes the challenge on page 19:

The Mt. Vernon Road corridor includes a wide variety of land uses including a neighborhood hardware store, a large grocery store, several gas/convenience stores, banks and credit unions, professional offices, restaurants, bars, and various specialty, variety, drug, auto parts, auto repair, and discount goods stores. The corridor also includes schools, churches, a residential care center, a fire station, and a cemetery.

2405: Used to be a pharmacy

However, the dominate [sic] land use is single family residential with just a few multi-family residential properties sprinkled throughout the corridor. There are several quick-serve and fast food restaurants but few sit-down style restaurants. There are vacant properties along the corridor and some occupied commercial sites that are dated and/or in need of renovation and maintenance. There are also several retail uses that are typically not considered neighborhood friendly including tobacco shops and liquor stores.

Because that's the kind of commerce wide fast streets get!

2663: Used to be a Greek restaurant

2700: Used to be an Italian restaurant

Unsurprisingly, public input sessions on the action plan revealed desires for small retail shops, redeveloping vacant lots, fewer "less neighborhood friendly uses," more separation between residential and commercial areas, turn lanes, and slower truck traffic. Bike lanes were nixed, as bicycling on this road is unsafe and slows car traffic (p. 19).

Word clouds generated by Mt. Vernon Road corridor public meetings

902 28th St: Cute shop for a walkable area

3605: Another vacant property, whose potential changes on a walkable street

The public's desires are reflected in the plan's goals (p 9): (1) promote new retail development and redevelopment along the corridor; (2) encourage neighborhood scale and neighborhood friendly uses; (3) improve traffic circulation and safety; (4) increase walkability and safety for pedestrians and cyclists. I expect the immediate pressure to improve traffic circulation to render the rest of this admirable list unfeasible. I hope I can explain why.

1841: Neighborhood retail lost to road widening

1901: Neighborhood retail lost to road widening

Neighborhood retail (goals 1 and 2) relies on walkability (goal #4), but that would require Mt. Vernon Road to become smaller and slower (goal #3b but not #3a). The stickler, as the plan's authors admit (p. 11), is that Mount Vernon Road has been developed into an arterial, the collector road for the entire southeast side. The authors claim it has too much traffic already--23000 according to the plan text, 18000 according to the state's average daily traffic counts--for its four lanes, and there are too many driveways for comfort as well. 

3303: Even small parking lots are between the (franchise) shops and the sidewalk

Since it is pretty much the only through street in that part of town, there's no reasonable alternative for truck traffic. 

3025: More franchises by parking lots

So the road will be reconfigured to restrict left turns across traffic at 15th and 19th Streets; it will end in a roundabout at 10th Street; parking lot access will where possible be redirected to side streets; and cyclists will be directed to alternative routes on parallel streets. 

Approaching downtown, new left-turn lane onto 15th Street,
creating more distance between core neighborhoods on either side

Cars and trucks will move more swiftly, past locations that could have supported neighborhood friendly uses. (See Herriges 2019 on how arterials work, and don't work.)

1420: Gargantuan c-store, nominally in Wellington Heights

This is the point where I should be telling you what the city should be doing to fix this. I confess I'm at a loss. What are we trying to build here? It's not a downtown, where we go for density, mix the uses, slow the cars, and ignore the parking-obsessed. It's not the suburbs, either, nor is it quite a highway. It's become an awkward mix of all three, so that anything you do to fix an immediate issue with Mt. Vernon Road--narrow it, widen it, add pedestrian infrastructure--is going to make something else worse. 

3401: Vernon Village used to have a small grocery and a French restaurant,
which then became a bakery/cafe. Now it might be a ghost kitchen?

(I would like to see bus service along the entirety of Mt. Vernon Road, just shooting straight from downtown to maybe Bertram Road and back. Currently, the circuitous Route 2 travels Mt. Vernon Road eastbound from 19th to 42nd, but not westbound. I don't know that it will fix anything detailed above, help the emergence of cute shops, cut down on vehicle speeds, or make walking safer, but it's curious that this has never been done.)

2714: Another auto parts store, next to another vacant building 

So, this year my #BlackFridayParking thoughts have wandered far from the subject of parking. But as we see here, excess parking is more than some unproductive government regulation. It is a product of the problematic way we build towns, and how we get around, just as it makes those problems worse. The result is stroads like this one. The parking lots are just the most obvious symptom, or maybe #2 behind the uninspiring commerce.

2000: Used to be an arts center, before that an elementary school

The public comments that informed the Mt. Vernon Road Action plan are not wrong, just naive. It's natural for us to want more of the things we enjoy, with fewer consequences. Why can't we have smoother traffic flow and plenteous parking, at cute shops, all at a neighborhood scale? Because, beloved readers, in this vale of tears, cars compete with everything else for space, and the easier we make it for cars to move the less likely they are to stop, to shop or for any other reason. 

2711: Big pharmacy with bigger parking lot

Same building, different side

The more room we make for cars in the form of parking lots, the less room there is for anything at a human/neighborhood scale. Anyone who's paid attention as Mt. Vernon Road has gotten wider and faster knows this. That's not politics, it's physics.

26th St: One of several cute dead-end streets off Mt. Vernon Road
Access becomes more difficult as the road gets faster

18th St: From here to downtown, access is limited by a barrier

Strong Towns video, "Are Parking Lots Ruining Your City" (15:40):

SEE ALSO: "Black Friday Parking 2022," 25 November 2022 

Mark Stoffer Hunter, "History Happenings: Changes Coming to Mount Vernon Road and 19th Street SE," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 24 November 2018

Ben Kaplan, "Mount Vernon Road is Dangerous by Design," Corridor Urbanism, 11 June 2021

Rahul Rejeev, "Children, Left Behind by Suburbia, Need Better Community Design," Public Square: A CNU Journal, 13 November 2023

Historical Aerials

3404: One of many vacant stores on Mt. Vernon Road

10th anniversary post: Downtown

Peppercorn at the Bank, 101 3rd Av SW

Ten years ago this month, the Holy Mountain blog was wringing its bloggy hands about the rebuilding of downtown Cedar Rapids. The opening of an upscale restaurant, Popoli, across the river in the 100-year-old former People's Savings Bank building, had me wondering if downtown was reinventing itself as a playground for the rich.

Today, that space is occupied by Peppercorn Food Company, which opens it for events like wedding receptions and corporate lunches. Even their website is elegant! But downtown as a whole has become a delightful mix of upscale and regular, not to mention commercial and office/service and residential--and coffee and alcohol! The public library and art museum face each other across Greene Square, and there are a number of performing arts venues within walking distance of those residences. Converting one-way streets back to two-way has improved, well, just about everything.

In 2013 I included both sides of the river in my definition of downtown. Today the west side has rebranded as Kingston Village, so that "downtown" to most Cedar Rapidians means the area between the river and maybe 6th Street, from A Avenue to 6th Avenue. (That would be a good question to crowd-source! I bet I'd get some disagreement about that.) I think both sides of the river are important components of the city center, however. Both sides have particular handicaps, but I think the west side's are more easily overcome, and I'm bullish on its long-term development. 

This week I engaged in a rather haphazard web search for housing in the city center, and even though some $450,000 condos have gotten a lot of attention, I found plenty that was not high-end.

Apartments at the Ashton Flats, 217 7th Av SW, run $913-1089 a month
(from their website)

The Village Lofts on 3rd Avenue SW start rentals at $1000 a month; the older Roosevelt Hotel starts at $675. There are more reasonably-priced condos as well: 200 3rd Avenue SW and 905 3rd Street SE run in the upper $100,000s, and condos are available in the Ground Transportation Center building for less. What downtown doesn't have, not surprisingly, is many single-family homes, but there are houses for sale on both sides of the river maybe 1.5 miles away. 

Among a shifting array of downtown restaurants, El Dorado, an unpretentious Mexican bar and grill with magnificent food, has become a favorite with my family. Whatever worries we had ten years ago about the elitism of downtown have not come to pass.

Downtown remains a work in progress. I keep expecting the increased residential population to produce some facilities catering to everyday needs, like grocery stores, pharmacies, and hardware stores. That has not yet happened. There's a big Hy-Vee on Wilson Avenue 1.9 miles away, 7 minutes away by car even at rush hour--the Czech Village Sav-A-Lot and the 1st Avenue are even closer--and that may be all anyone feels they need.

A frequent complaint about downtown is the lack of parking. This is because most of Cedar Rapids remains car-dependent, most people downtown at the moment have driven there from somewhere else, and because the acres of surface parking nearby are not accessible (because privately-owned) or not considered nearby enough to suit drivers. There's a tradeoff between parking and quality-of-life that is not readily recognized. But the struggle is real. A few weeks ago we attended a play downtown on a night there was also a symphony concert. I wish we could have taken a bus instead of driving and parking, but alas, on Saturday night there is no bus.

The future of downtown depends on its connections to nearby neighborhoods. The transect is a concept that refers to development that becomes gradually less intense as it gets farther from the city center. Unfortunately, Cedar Rapids' downtown area is separated from neighborhoods on all sides, so the intensity dramatically collapses. This is particularly true on the east side, where the vast MedQuarter neighborhood lies between downtown and Wellington Heights, and is nearly empty except for weekday working hours. The west side must contend with the interstate and the proposed casino development. 

Together, the MedQuarter, I-380, and the casino-to-be surround downtown in such a way to prevent much walkability. But the west side barriers (highway, casino) seem to me more permeable, and I have hopes that they can be overcome.

NOTE: The City Council will consider a new downtown plan at its December 5 meeting. 

SEE ALSO: 

"The Future of Downtown Cedar Rapids," 24 June 2022

"News from Downtowns," 23 June 2017