We’ve seen the absurd ways that cities subsidize parking. In Seattle, they’ve gone full-circle, using eminent domain to seize a parking lot and turning it into…a parking lot:
Myrtle Woldson, 103, owns a long-term parking lot near the Seattle waterfront valued at $7 million. When the city approached the Spokane resident about allowing it to lease space to help ease the parking crunch during construction of the Highway 99 tunnel and the seawall, she declined, city sources say. Now the City Council is moving to condemn the property to provide more short-term parking for businesses, tourists and shoppers.
Around 100 on-street parking spaces will be lost during the Alaska Way Viaduct construction. To “mitigate” the parking loss, Seattle proposed leasing Woldson’s parking lot. Woldson already provides parking — just at a market rate. Woldson declined the lease offer as too low. So rather than meet her price, Seattle will just seize her lot through eminent domain.
Seattle is also considering whether to build a parking garage on the lot. Because if there is one thing the waterfront lacks, it is parking:
Systemic Failure 
[…] Clearly, there is no shortage of parking on Seattle's waterfront. Image: Systemic Failure […]
Sure, you can show a map with only the waterfront parking highlighted to emphasize that parking but what happens if you highlight all the parking in the map you used? I suspect that, like many major urban centers, parking is supplied on most blocks – whether via surface parking or structured parking. I don’t like that eminent domain is being used this way but stating that there’s clearly no shortage of parking along Seattle’s waterfront (a major tourist attraction by the way) by using an illustration that makes it appear that all Seattle’s CBD parking is indeed on the waterfront is a bit intellectually dishonest,
So, onshay, it’s dishonest to say there’s a lot of parking near the waterfront because there’s also a lot of parking away from the waterfront? Yeah. OK. Right.
That’s not what I said. The graphic is misleading in that it shows available parking along the waterfront only. I could make a map showing all of the CBD showing all the white people working in Nordstrom and say, “gee, too many white people work in Nordstrom”. But if I didn’t show how many white people work in all the other buildings in the CBD you would have no reference point – no basis for comparison. I’d be biasing you and that’s intellectually dishonest.
One can anecdotally just say that there’s plenty of parking along the waterfront and you can make a map that shows that parking exists along the waterfront but is there really enough? Will there be enough after 100 spaces are lost? I don’t know. I do know there’s a difference between long-term and short-term parking lots. I also know that there will be, not 100, but 500 spaces lost because of tunnel construction. There have already been 100 lost.
To have an maintain a vibrant waterfront means making it accessible to everyone. In fact, as an area that depends on bringing outsiders (tourists) in, the waterfront needs to make it as easy as possible to get and be there. I’m not saying bringing masses of cars to the waterfront is great (in fact, I really dislike the idea) but, hey, I also don’t have to pay a lease in a building down there. If feeding my family was dependent on people accessing my shop on the waterfront and then the city came through with Bertha and made that unfeasible I’d be pissed off.
I’ll bet you’re right though. I’ll bet there’s never been a traffic study done on this. I’ll bet the city just hates senior citizens and has been aching to drop $7 million of taxpayer money to seize land from one.
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
Waterfront property is pretty god damn valuable. There is no excuse for building a parking lot there, under any circumstances.
Augie says “there is no excuse for building a parking lot there”
Yeah, unless it is YOUR PROPERTY, and you WANT to build a parking lot there.
The Alaskan Way Viaduct Tunnel is a whole Systemic Failure in itself.
A square with the letter “P” in it does little to convey how much parking is actually available, what type of parking, the cost of parking, accessibility, or even the most basic – are those square “P”s actually enough to serve the business and tourist traffic that the waterfront attracts? Can a tour bus fit in any of those spots? Any of that parking serve mostly early bird business commuters and leave tourists looping around and around looking for a spot?
That might be nice to know in the “analysis”.
There is tons of parking in the garages below the high rise apartment buildings (such as Harbor steps); day visitors should pay market rates just like residents and workers have to.
I don’t get it. Maybe you have to live in Seattle to understand. To me, an outsider with no dog in the fight, I’d say Seattle robbed 103 year old Myrtle Woldson.