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| It felt like it! (And on the Celsius scale, it actually was.) |
Consumer confidence may be down at COVID levels, and Black Friday ads are increasingly oriented to websites, but it's still Black Friday. If you give a boy a parking lot, he's going to want to take a picture of it. At least it was warmer than last year, though at first not by much. Eventually the sun came out and it was all right.
Along the way, I saw this marquee.
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| Question, 224 Collins Road NE |
It was not funny, which weirdly reassured me I was not becoming hypothermic.
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| Answer, 224 Collins Road NE |
Strong Towns started Black Friday Parking in 2013; my first year was 2015, covering roughly the same territory as this year. For the record, I also wore the same Garfield School sweatshirt. The Parking Reform Network has taken over the promotion, but the point remains the same: to document excess surface parking, even on what is arguably the busiest shopping day of the year (Lefebvre 2025).
I started a little past 9:00 at the bus stop on Twixt Town Road, close by the Collins Road Square shopping plaza. It was maybe one-third full.
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| Collins Road Square, looking towards Petco |
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| Collins Road Square, looking towards Michael's |
Across Collins Road is Lindale Mall, which dates from the early 1960s, but the Collins Road side has gotten quite the facelift. Its many parking lots were half-full, maybe more.
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| Lindale Mall, parking lot facing Collins Road |
Hobby Lobby had the fullest parking lot I saw, easily 60 and maybe 75 percent full...
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| 180 Collins Road, looking towards Hobby Lobby |
...but even that plaza had plenty of empty spaces.
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| 180 Collins Road, other side of the plaza |
There were no cars parked in the huge lot on the other side of Collins Road. It has been vacant since the Hy-Vee grocery store. I don't know for a fact that Hy-Vee is retaining ownership of the building and just leaving it vacant, but I wouldn't put it past them; they tried that at
their Mound View store, which also remains vacant anyhow.
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empty parking lot at vacant building, 279 Collins Road
(utility pole cleverly used to block sun) |
Across Northland Avenue from the former grocery store, however, Northland Square plaza's parking lot was well used, being at least 60 percent full.
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| Northland Square from the east |
But even today, there were plenty of parking spots going unused.
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| Northland Square, middle of the plaza |
I cut across the Collins Aerospace parking lot--mostly empty, with a skeleton crew working today--and ended up at the Blairs Ferry Road Target. It had a lot of shoppers, and its parking lot was at least two-thirds full...
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| Target parking lot, east edge |
...but a great big parking lot is hard to fill.
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| Target parking lot, west edge |
I've said most years that I don't think these particular parking lots are driven by mandates in the zoning code (though those do exist). It's just how we develop commercial strips.
Collins Road may be the ghastliest such strip in our city--though the
Westdale area gets some votes, too--but it's just one example of development we shouldn't be doing. The parking lots themselves are just part of the damage, but they do more damage in town than they do on the suburban edge. I'll have more to say about that in a future post.
To build the type of cities we want, to take advantage of zoning reforms that re-legalize compact, walkable, and transit-rich neighborhoods, we have to continue to pursue comprehensive parking reforms that go beyond repealing minimums and actively combat car dependency. Fortunately, these additional reforms and strategies are also simple, impactful, and fiscally advantageous. Cities should price their curbs to manage demand and spend the revenue on infrastructure and programs that improve safe, convenient, and equitable access to our communities for people traveling by any mode, not just in their cars. (Jordan 2022, italics mine)
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